Today Etsynews has learned of two successful Etsy shops that were deleted under seemingly strange circumstances. This is complete account deletion- the shop is a brick wall. It’s not the same as being muted in the forums. Etsy has warned users with bills over 3 months overdue that their shops will be deleted, but neither of these cases seems to be related to overdue bills. Both sellers have received emails from Etsy which state the reasons for their stores being closed, and they are not bill-related.
All of the information we have about these two cases comes from the sellers. Bear in mind that there are two sides to every story, but Etsy will never discuss the cases in public so we will never hear both sides. Certain facts can be verified using google’s cached pages and posts in public forums.
The first deletion we learned of was Thaidreams.
This is a cached page of her shop on January 12, 2008.
As of January 12, she had 100% positive feedback and had made 466 sales.
She wrote about Etsy closing her shop in her blog here, and she posted the email that Etsy sent her in her blog here.
The reason allegedly given was “a history of conflicts”.
The second deleted shop is still trying to get reinstated, so I cannot publish the shop name.
(update, January 22: Closedshop has posted her full story on page 14 of the comments on this article, and has revealed her shops to be heyprettycupcake and thepromoshop)
They did create a second account “closedshop” to post in the forums about their situation, and Etsy has since deleted that account as well. They (originally) did not publicly reveal their main shop name and UEN will not reveal it either, but I have verified by cached google pages that the shop had 100% positive feedback on January 16, two days ago.
This is their forum post.
They have multiple posts in the thread giving their version of events.
Other sellers in that thread (aorta, automaton, magicjelly) described having similar treatment from Etsy. (shops closed without warning for one lost package)
aorta says:
youstink, a buyer never got something so they filed a report to etsy. i never found out till my shop was closed- brick wall. i talked to admin who explained they send out 3 emails before they close a shop, but i never got those emails so i was shut down.
the admin i talked to did quickly reinstate my shop though.
magicjelly says:
Haven’t read the whole thread yet, but just wanted to add that this exact same thing happened to me last year - a former feature seller with 100% positive feedback, just like Aorta.I phoned NY & my shop was immediately reinstated. I was assured it was human error & that steps would be taken that this kind of thing wouldn’t happen again.
Both closedshop’s buyer and magicjelly’s buyer were told by Etsy to file cybercrime reports with the FBI.
The thread was locked with this admonishment:
RobWhite says:
We can’t discuss specific situations between Etsy admin and members of the Etsy community.For clarification, sellers who have bills that are 2 months overview will not be able to list, relist or renew items in their shops. Sellers who have bills that are 3 months overdue may be suspended. You can find that information in the Storque here: http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/etsyNews/article/billing-alert-a-reminder-about-the-new-policy-for-the-new-ye/858/ , which is also referenced in the most recent post about overdue bills here: http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/etsyNews/article/cant-post-new-listings-overdue-etsy-bill/1038/
We also ask that you do not make alternate accounts on Etsy for the sole purpose of posting in the Forums and/or chat rooms. The best and most expedient way to handle this situation is to contact Abuse at abuse (!at) etsy dot com.
Robwhite later in another thread explained he posted the overdue bill information to answer some general questions from the thread, but NOT to imply that the OP had been deleted for having overdue bills. (which would be a violation of their privacy if that was the case and he had discussed it in public)
previous UEN coverage of shop/account deletions
http://etsynews.com/73/unwarrantedaccidental-shop-suspensions-sellers-be-warned/
http://etsynews.com/75/another-case-of-erroneous-shop-suspension/
http://etsynews.com/80/how-does-admin-handle-shop-suspensions/
http://etsynews.com/312/etsy-says-no-double-billing-has-occurred/?cp=5
(see comments, not main article)
other users who have had shops deleted without warning, although most have been eventually reinstated:
moxierings
walkonthemoon
ScrapScrap
magicjelly
aorta/automaton
retroattic
thepromoshop
heyprettycupcake
Lesliejewelry
update, January 22:
Closedshop has posted her full story here:
Please note again, that this is the seller’s version of events, and UEN does not guarantee the accuracy of comments.
http://etsynews.com/?p=584&cp=14#comments
She has revealed her shop names: heyprettycupcake and thepromoshop. (both accounts are deleted/closed)
Etsy will not be reinstating either shop.
Update January 31:
another case of sudden shop closure: Lesliejewelry
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5444820
That shop has been reopened
January 19th, 2008 at 1:56 am
re: the sockpuppet rule, technically you only have to reveal other existing accounts you own. Closedshop’s original account no longer exists, so do they have to reveal it? At the time they posted, closedshop was their ONLY Etsy account. So therefore they were not violating the sockpuppet rule.
I hope they can get this sorted out before Tuesday. It seems a rather extreme reaction for a lost item costing $3.00 that had already been re-sent.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:17 am
jimchesters says:
of course he does say “generally speaking”, so that does not contradict the specific cases described above, where the shops were deleted by Etsy with no warning, while the seller was already communicating and cooperating with Etsy the whole time.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:43 am
She was a reseller, and not the person you all think she was. White and brit and called Michele. Lie and contruction.
Now if I disappear and someone get a sniper after me, you know who is behing!
January 19th, 2008 at 3:02 am
Are you sure that isn’t her friend/roommate you are referring to?
But actually the race issue would be irrelevant to me anyway. I am sure other Etsians lie about their age, marital status, jobs, possibly even their gender. I don’t see what bearing that has on Etsy deleting a shop. Etsy should just be enforcing their written rules, impartially.
I am more interested in the pattern of abuse by Etsy and their failure to provide due process. My opinions aren’t based on who I like or dislike or who are my friends. Sometimes, I can disagree about an issue with someone I like very much. other times I can find myself in the icky position of agreeing with someone I dislike very much! (even a broken clock is right twice a day)
I try to base my judgment on the circumstances and not the personality. If I made all my decisions just based on who I liked better, then I’d be no better than Etsy. :(
January 19th, 2008 at 3:07 am
These Etsy people are such mega idiots to the extreme.
I’m about totally ready to just say F(*)&&*) it and have nothing to do with their stupidity ever again.
January 19th, 2008 at 3:13 am
Deleting sellers for being the victims of ongoing campaigns of harassment is wrong, plain and simple. From what I understand the seller mentioned above is quite likely to be not the only shop to vanish in similar circumstances in the last 24 hours.
If the shop was deleted due to reselling, then that would make it a different story with a different set of arguments. But that’s not the case.
January 19th, 2008 at 3:15 am
I know the first instinct (mine normally would be too) is to be skeptical and think, well this is only one side of the story and of course the person will tell the story to make themself look innocent.
I know lots of people said that about me when I was permanently muted. They either didn’t believe my story or thought I was slanting it or embellishing.
But the similarities in the emails and the bizarre Kafkaesque treatment that Thaidreams claims she received, and the treatment i KNOW I received, makes me believe her description of her case.
I understand other people being skeptical but I have been through the Etsy ringer firsthand and truth is stranger than fiction. They really truly ARE that messed up.
I hope that none of you have to go through this in order to learn for yourselves.
January 19th, 2008 at 4:41 am
This is exactly what happened to us:
I have complained to Etsy about 4 or 5 different sellers for months, harassing me on the forums, telling lies about our shop, calling us resellers etc. Etsy always said they would stop it but they never did. Those sellers are STILL on Etsy, still selling and still abusing other sellers. Etsy passed our shop TWICE, Etsy admin even bought some of our pants TWICE, and left great feedback.
So, yesterday I started a topic about “Why we are successful on Etsy”, thought it would be a good topic to help other sellers. It was going really well with lots of nice people, and then 1 woman came on and accused me of lying and 2 people couldn’t possible do all that. She also mentioned we sell “HUNDREDS” of things a week - if anyone bothered to take a look at our shop you would see we sell about 65 items A MONTH and ooh we’ve sold 3 items on Dawanda in 4 months.. Then this stupid woman said I must be lying because I hadn’t replied to her. Hello? I’m in Bangkok, it was Friday evening here and I was out with my boyfriend.
I got back home at 1:30am and many etsy sellers had convoed or emailed me to tell me about this woman’s nasty comments about our business. So I emailed Etsy to ask them to tell her to stop and also to complain about another woman who has been harassing me for months (she has been muted from the forums several times for doing it).
I was told by Emily from Etsy admin that she would forward my email onto the correct people to deal with it. This was at 2;30 AM my time. At 7AM when I got up, our shop was gone from Etsy and the email I posted on our blog from Emily was in our email box - so in 4 1/2 hours we were kicked off permanently.. They kicked us off because we had “too many conflicts with other Etsy users”, never mind that these users have been allowed to abuse and harrass us for almost 6 months and Etsy has done NOTHING.
If you don’t believe me I am happy to send you the e-mail from Emily as it shows the history of my complaints to her about abuse in the last month and a half and her responses.
So THAT is how you get kicked off Etsy. You get abused for months, Etsy does nothing to the people who are the abusers, and then after too many complaints YOU get kicked off.
Oh and to Hyena (who is one of the people who has abused us, been kicked off Etsy forums for lying about us, and has lied about us for months!) get your facts straight - I’m Asian and so is my sister. I’m 30 years old and there’s a photo of me on our blog. My friend Michelle who you are talking about is British, she’s 45 and there are many photos of her on her blog. She’s a teacher, a writer and she has an Etsy shop selling her paintings and an ecrater shop selling t shirts, she also writes on associated content. If she has time to do ALL THAT AND run our shop too, then we MUST be the same person. Please Hyena get a life and stop lying about things you know nothing about.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:42 am
There was a 3rd shop apparently deleted either tonight or recently, Soapyho. I have no information at this time as to why they were deleted. They posted on the forums as recently as Jan 17th.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Just wanted to add that this makes SEVEN people I know who have stated that admin closed their shop without warning or due process. Most, fortunately, were reinstated (most, unfortunately, without apologies).
January 19th, 2008 at 6:16 am
i’m stunned, appalled and extremely nervous about doing business on etsy this morning.
to paraphrase the UK prime minister who recently described one of his minister’s actions as ‘there is nothing sinister about incompetence’ i would say that everything about etsy’s incompetence is sinister.
i haven’t even seen Thaidreams on the forums recently, guessing she was staying out because of all the nastiness thrown her way
is Etsy inherently racist against sellers outside US/not US-born? by my tally there seems to be a disproportionately high degree of severe action against such sellers/buyers in etsy’s short history tho’ i hesitate to label them as prejudiced
January 19th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Do we have to assume the worst about Etsy admin? They have to keep details private so we don’t get to hear their side of the story.
We all want Etsy to get rid of the re-sellers, positive feedback or not. I have no idea if the closed shops were closed mistakenly or legitimately. Some other sellers who posted in related threads have said that their shops, deleted mistakenly, were reinstated after the mistake was realized.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:05 am
What I don’t understand is someone can blatantly copy another person’s products, or even whole shop and not even get a warning. People can leave viscious, untrue and unjustified feedback, and nothing is done and it’s not removed, people can resell tat and crap and people can attack others in the forum and nothing is done, yet this has happened all over one reported non-delivery of an item and so-called “conflicts” with other Etsy members. What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?
January 19th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I’m honestly shocked about ThaiDreams being deleted. If all it takes is “a history of conflict” then I can think of a few other Etsy sellers who should be shaking in their boots.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:28 am
The issue is about Etsy’s *process* and *reasons* for closing a shop, and not about whether or not a specific shop deserved to be closed. There have been multiple anecdotes - from people I absolutely believe, like MagicJelly and Aorta (aka Automaton) - of shops being closed without due process and for shaky reasons.
WRT Thaidreams, the “history of conflicts” reason given rings true in that it sounds like typical Etsy bullshit, and is similar to what happened to the banned 5 but taken a step further. What is behind the history of conflicts doesn’t matter - the fact is simply that this is not a reason to close a shop, especially without fair warning. Had it been because Admin finally believed that the shop was selling mass-produced items, that would have been a reason that some people would agree with and others would not, but at least it would be something in their own rules to warrant closure. And perhaps it would have been a more appropriate call for them to make, perhaps not. But since the reason given was a “history of conflicts”… well, that could be applied in very broad strokes to many people. And apparently it could happen without warning. That’s the part that disturbs me most.
As for the unnamed shop (closedshop) being closed, if one believes their story (and I do), then that also is bullshit. Who remembers how long it took for them to finally close Reckon after so many people complained about not receiving their items? Yet this sounds like it was based on a single complaint? I sincerely hope that all of Reckon’s angry buyers were told to report his cybercrimes to the FBI. Maybe while the FBI were at it, they’d look into all of Reckon’s copyright violations that Etsy ignored.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I don’t always agree with other’s opinion posted in the forums, but I can’t recall anything ban-worthy with Thai.
As far as being harrassed, Thai’s location has a lot to do with that. There seems to be a underlying belief on Etsy by many etsy sellers, that if a seller resides in Asia, they have to be reselling mass merchandise.
The same seller will buy an item at Michael’s, one made overseas, glue a crystal to it, and call it handmade.
Sure overseas vendors might be able to obtain supplies not available here in the states, or be able to obtain them at less cost. But there are also items here, that are available to us, that aren’t available to overseas sellers.
Very disappointing.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Ok, I have to admit something.For a long time, without evidence, I suspected thaidreams of being bangkok bint from ebay. I feel really bad for suspecting her and being a jerk in general.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
This is just one more case of the disparity of treatment among different sellers at etsy. There are obviously vocal anti-etsy sellers in the forums on a daily basis who will never have their shops closed. How sad.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
“Sure overseas vendors might be able to obtain supplies not available here in the states, or be able to obtain them at less cost.”
Ironically, pretty much everything is so much cheaper in the US compared to in most other western countries, so from the perspective of a non-US-based seller, the same thing applies when looking at the US. Yet it doesn’t make me assume that you’re all resellers! It’s just different economies.
Sorry to stray off course, but I thought it was worth highlighting that.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I can’t believe this has happened again. I am so glad I cut my ties to etsy this week. If what it takes is a “history of conflict”, then etsy needs to start deleting a whole lot of stores that take it upon themselves to openly bash other shops on the forums. And I am in complete agreement with Andy’s whole comment. Say the word “China” on the forums, and listen to the garbage that spews from these people.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
From what I understood, those of you who have been banned or mistreated by etsy are supporting Thai just because of that.
For me, the philosophy of the enemy of my enemy is my friend is totally off. That person did wrong to the whole handmade community and particularly clothing designers. She was one of the first reseller on etsy and other platform and she opened the door to all the others.
Plus what she did lying as such is extremely unethical for me.
Even thought I was hating etsy with all my gut, I would never ever support her.
Also it is not because I don’t support her I support etsy. I am more concerned about the future of the handmade scene and the sustainability of my work and the one of the people who make their creations.
Etsy managed the whole thing like shit as usual, lying too. But that is the point, they lied about the real reasons. Maybe to protect themselves, maybe there is some kinfd of liability somewhere legally.
But not one second in the world I would pity Thaidreams. What she did just hung a damocles sword above her head from day one. She was really lucky to have made all that money in the mean time.
Plus I am totally conviced there is absolutely no thailandese girl (and I am not the only one), the whole thing was conducted by Michelle. If there is something I hate, this is colonialistic exploiters.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I’m not saying it’s not true, but Hyena, how do you know Thaidreams is a reseller and that her name is Michelle? Who is this Michelle person?
January 19th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I don’t want to give all the links here. If you want some, please contact me. hyena10AThotmailDOTcom
January 19th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Hyena,
You have lied about our shop from the first month we were on Etsy. What you hated was that the clothing we made sells and yours doesn’t. That’s not our fault!
Yes we were kicked off Etsy because of racists who accused us of not making our things. Two Etsy admin bought our pants and gave us great feedback, but I was pursued around Etsy by vicious, nasty, racist people who couldn’t stand that a seller who could sell clothing cheaper than they could was making a success on Etsy. That’s not OUR fault - Thailand is a cheaper place to buy fabric and other things. And as Asia booms (which it is doing now) more US sellers will have to deal with this. You won’t be able to slam down every Asian seller as a ‘reseller’.
And you don’t believe I exist? Check out our our blog and our friend’s blog. Our FRIEND is Michelle, not me. She has a shop on Etsy too called ‘Fabletoo’ and she is ‘Bangkokbint’ on ebay - we live in the same building - there are four of us who are friends. Would you like our building address, I’m sure the building owner will tell you that she lives on one floor and I live on the floor above with my boyfriend. And for a photograph of me, you can check out her blog: http://www.britinbangkok.blogspot.com - there are many photos of her and a few of me, we’ve been friends for 4 years. I’m ‘Sue’ my nickname for Suphak - maybe then you’ll believe there’s an ‘Asian girl’ who makes and sells pants and bags. Then again, I doubt it - you’ve lied about us for a long time and are not willing to listen to the truth. Jealousy has clouded your vision. Too sad :(
Oh and there is no such word as ‘thailandese’. I’m Thai. Thank you.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Why are my replies not showing up? It’s incredibly unfair to have the seller be talked about, be told that I could comment here and then none of my comments are showing up?
January 19th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Actually, Hyena, if you make a public statement that Thai dreams is a reseller, I think the least you could do it back it up with public information. Your response is a bit “etsyesque” to me.
Your response is no different that the sellers who bashed Thaidreams in the forums last night when her account was closed and couldn’t defend herself.
And the letter form etsy in her blog seemed to say the account was not deleted for reselling, but for stirring up trouble.
January 19th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Am I allowed to post the links here? Editors?
January 19th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Whatever, I am out of this story. They can say whatever they want. Insulting everyone, and calling me crazy and liar, and calling all the people who did the same researches as me liar, we are not fooled by her.
Just check out her blog and her last post about me. See how Fabletoo is speaking about racism. They can say whatever they want, I will never believe them.
I am not jealous. I just can’t stand liars and cheaters. Resellers are hurting clothing designer big time. That is the bottom line for me.
You can find the exact same thai pants as theirs all over the net. Do you own research, connect the dots. And call me a crazy liar living in lalaland if you want. I don’t care. I know where my heart and mind are.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Speaking as an editor, I would prefer if this discussion was kept to the issue at hand, which is deletion of shops without warning or discussion.
UEN is not a court to try someone on charges of reselling, so I’ll kindly request people to not post “evidence” of such.
Thaidreams is welcome to post here if she likes.
I also want to make it very clear that the opinions posted in UEN comments are not the opinions of UEN and we make no guarantees as to the accuracy of information provided therein. Each comment is the responsibility of the person who made it (including the editors when they take off their editorial hats).
If any clarification is required, please see our Policies section:
http://etsynews.com/mission-and-policies/
January 19th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Ah, damage control. Such a beautiful thing in action. Thank you quirke, it’s refreshing to see your post.
January 19th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
speaking of having one’s shop closed without explanation or discussion, this is people’s livelihoods, their business, how they pay their bills.
I have always said that one should put more energy in promoting their product, their name, their site, their blog, rather than promoting someone else’s site. A site that you have no control over. One day you are a big seller, the next day you are getting such an email from Emily, with the rug pulled out from under you.
A site needs great products and sellers worse than a seller needs a site. People buy your product because they like it. Not because of where you sell it. I think lots of etsy sellers forget this. I blame the tainted kool-aid. :)
Having said that though, I was looking at Dawanda today for the first time in a long time. There are things that I really like about it- mostly that it’s about handmade.
Once people have their own site set up, with your own mailing list, etc., and you wish to expand a bit further and have the time, it should be on your list.
You already know that you need great photos to sell products online. Better photos, better descriptions, more entincement for buyers. Setting up and managing your own shop is the easy part. If you aren’t sure about how, or where, ask people. There are several options out there.
January 19th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
.
January 19th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Stirring up trouble? I don’t agree with that reasoning, even if the reason that I disagree is that pots and kettles shouldn’t get to fighting
January 19th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I cannot speak anything of the thaidreams or soapyho as I don’t know them or of their story, all I can speak for is my own story.
I have asked to remain annonymous for obvious reasons. I am not doing this as a hoax or a joke. I am “closedshop” from Etsy; the one everyone is saying was a “sock puppet” on a boring Friday night. This is not the case. I am an Etsy buyer and seller.
This is my job, my full time, 24/7, 365 days a year job. This is how I feed my family, take care of the bills and put clothes on my back. The item that was “allegidly not delivered” was a $3.50 item. I am not belittling the item that buyer purchased but I shipped it off twice and would have much rather given a refund then to have my LIFE closed down without any warning.
Etsyians are saying that maybe there is more to the story. Maybe there is, I don’t know. I haven’t done anything on Etsy that would get me banned from the site. I have been a seller here for about 6-8 months with 100% feedback.
All I know is my side of the story, what I have been told is the reason that I was shut down. If there was another reason for my shop to be shut down, Etsy should have contacted me. I am sure anyone in their right mind would have taken care of it instead of being humiliated and embarrassed over something like this.
Very few people know my shop name only because they cared about the situation and asked. People who know of my shop and went to it daily are emailing me and asking me what happened. To tell someone that you were shut down for “non deliver” is embarrassing.
January 19th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
First off, I just have to say, I’m severely out of the loop now that I’m pregnant.
Secondly, I personally have the pleasure of purchasing from both stores that were deleted. Yes, I know who the store other than Thaidreams is, and no I won’t divulge anymore information then that.
Third, I’m coming back to Etsy for round 893849834 and I’m at the point where I’m thinking, “If I sell, I sell… If I don’t, no big deal”.
In defense of Thaidreams, I have 2 pairs of their pants and now that I’m pregnant and have the ever expanding belly, they come in quite handy. I can tell you for a fact that these pants are handmade. They weren’t mass produced.
In defense of the other store,… well, what can I say? It’s bizarre. Shutting a store down over a mix-up that happened that long ago? Seriously?
January 19th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
A bunch of comments were held up in moderation. New users’ comments are more likely to be moderated. The reason for delay in releasing those comemnts is that Quirke had to drag me out of my political haze to get over here.
We haven’t been moderating any comments here, so don’t worry! But, still, let’s all be as civil as we can so that isn’t even necessary.
Best,
S
January 19th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Hyena, links are allowed, but they might require us to manually approve your comment.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Editors, thank you for releasing those posts. Interesting to read all viewpoints.
(for those who hadn’t noticed, go back and read #8 and #24)
But as I said previously - the issue here is about Etsy following a standard procedure with fair warnings, NOT about why a specific store was closed. If they suspected items were mass-produced, I’d be happy that they close a store quickly, but in a case like that they would SAY SO. If it is for a different reason (as appears to be the case in these current closings), there should be warnings and protocol and steps followed.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
This is not only heartbreatbreaking for the sellers, but as a buyer on etsy, I am shocked at the behavior of etsy staff. Since when does Emily close an account for what she perceives as trouble on the forums?
Were not even the etsy 5 still allowed to remain as sellers?
January 19th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
The Etsy 5 were only banned from posting in the forums, not deleted entirely.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I want Etsy to get rid of resellers as much as anyone. I flag the BLATANT ones all the time and NOTHING is ever done about them. But neither of these shops are resellers, and neither of their “goodbye and F**k off” letters from Etsy said they were resellers. One was deleted for “conflicts” with other users, the other was deleted for a buyer complaint about non-receipt of goods.
I think the whole reseller issue is a red herring here.
If Etsy was banning anyone for being a reseller they should say that in the email. That is what they told Ethaibid when they closed his shop.
I also have to say I beleive that Thaidreams is not the same person as Michelle. They have very different posting styles on the forums. It’s very hard to consistently use another “voice” and another “character” unless you are a split personality or a skilled actress or something. I think they are two separate people based on my interactions with each of them.
And if this ‘history of conflicts’ was just on the forums, then ALL the peple involved in the conflicts should have gotten the same punishment. I don’t know why they couldn’t just mute the people from the forums, even permanetly like they did to the Etsy 5, and continue to let them buy and sell. This is someone’s livelihood at stake here. They never had any conflicts with their customers and all their biyers were satisfied and gave good feedback, so if the only problem was on the forum then just mute them from the forum. Etsy always claims their punishments will fit the crimes, that they will only suspend your privileges from the area you supposedly abused. (example, muting your convos if you send too many convos) So why suspend Thaidreams from selling if her alleged violations were on the forums?
The punishment does not fit the crime and is not consistent with Etsy’s stated policy.
I feel it is unjust to delete somene’s entire shop just because of some forum conflicts. And yes, there are other people who have a MUCH longer history of conflicts on the forums, people who have repeated conflicts with dozens of other users and who have been muted 5 or 6 times and STILL have not changed their behavior. So this treatment of Thaidreams is neither consistent nor fair unless they delete the shops of all other users who are constantly fighting with anyone and everyone.
The punishment was not fair or consistent with other user’s treatment.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
To me this is not about taking sides to support a friend or oppose an enemy, this is about the principle of the thing and about how Etsy deals with it’s customers. If I only considered my personal feelings and who I liked or disliked when I made my judgments, well that would make me as bad as Etsy. They make all their decisions based on subjective personal feelings. I have to put aside my personal feelings and be impartial.
When the Etsy 5 got banned, most people just lined up and took sides based on if they liked us or not. That is missing the point! The support I was the most impressed with was the people who said “Even though I don’t personally like them, they didn’t deserve to be banned”. Those people could see the bigger issue and were being objective.
It’s not about who you like or don’t like, because today it might be your enemy that gets deleted and you’re happy, but tomorrow it could be your friend, or it could be any of YOU.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I tried to reply to this thread all day yesterday but couldn’t as my posts were tied up in moderation. Thanks for untying me :) this is just a test before I spend time posting a long post. Thanks.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Yes, JB. That is exactly correct.
I am pretty much speechless over Etsy’s latest missteps - and I usually have a lot to say when I post.
While there are definitely a few stellar admins, the overall slipshod manner in which Etsy conducts its business, interacts with customers, and even programs the site is getting scarier and scarier. And I had such genuinely high hopes for this new year.
There is no consistency on Etsy. None.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
My account was deleted because I had my other shop listed in my shop announcement. I was given no warning or anything. I just woke up one morning and it was gone. I think this happened in August if I recall correctly. I wrote about it here at the time. I realize I was in the wrong but I would have just removed the link if I had been asked. Seems like there was speculation that the REAL reason my shop was closed was a completely different reason than the one stated but I can’t remember for sure. I have tried to block Etsy’s craziness from my mind. If you want to read my comments and those of others about it at the time you might check for posts here on August 2. That seems to be the date it happened according to the emails I still have. So, this randomly closing shops without notice for unjustified reasons is nothing new.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I just went back and looked up my old comments here on Etsy News about my shop closing. If you go here http://etsynews.com/312/etsy-says-no-double-billing-has-occurred/?cp=5 and start at comment 45 you can read about it if you are interested.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Like Sarena I’ve been in a political haze too (I work on the Ron Paul campaign). I’ve been following this saga as much as I could, but haven’t had time to post. I rarely post on the Etsy forums anymore. To much cool-aid drinking, and rosy glowness for me. (yes, I know I’m cynical!)
I’m absolutely appalled by the ugly, discriminatory attacks on Thaidreams! Just because one is Thai does NOT mean they are a reseller, or less worthy of respect than anyone else. Such attacks come from a place of prejudice and xenophobia. Sadly many Americans are both. :(
It is jaw dropping to me that Etsy has acted like it has! I personally think it’s a symptom of something very wrong at the heart of Etsy.
I don’t know exactly what the mind set of Etsy admin is, but I think they are getting worse, not better at running their business. It almost smells like panic. That as young amateurs they could get away with a lot while the site was small, but now that it is exploding, things that they were barely manage are out of control. They need to either sell, or hire experienced mangers, or Etsy will crater.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Thanks for the nice comments. I just wanted to say we were kicked off for a ‘history of conflict’, the history of conflict was me reporting people in the forums who lied about our things and then getting kicked off for doing so. I was even told at one point by an Etsy admin that a ‘cease and desist’ letter would be a good thing to do. Then when I stated that in the forums the Etsy admin came in (obviously terrified her boss would be angry) saying no she hadn’t said that. Finally after I reported 2 people for posting horrible comments in the forums, I was told at about 2:15 AM my time it would be dealt with by abuse@etsy.com. So I was so shocked to get back online at 7AM when I woke up to find we had been kicked off.
Hyena states she “You can find the exact same thai pants as theirs all over the net.” Ummm, no, actually you can’t. We make our own pants, they are heavy 100% cotton material and are all double-seamed (French seamed). We also shorten our pants to any length that a customer wants. Do resellers do that? All you had to do was look at the hundreds of comments from our customers who raved about our things and our customer service but you wouldn’t do that because your head was stuck in a cloud of jealousy.
The ones you see ‘all over the net’ are pants that are either made of fake rayon (it’s actually nylon, not rayon and they sell at every market in Thailand) or a cotton fabric that is not as heavy as what we use. We get our fabric from our uncle who buys it from a friend in chiang Mai.
We’ve had 471 customers on Etsy with 365 (?)(sorry can’t remember the actual number) 100% positive feedbacks from people who LOVE our pants and can clearly see they are handmade. Yet people like Hyena have still insisted we don’t make our pants with no proof except ‘you can find the exact thai pants all over the internet’. She is somebody who has talked about ‘colonial expolitation’ and how much she hates it. Well my dear, you just helped shut down a legitimate business on Etsy owned by two Thai women who did nothing wrong but offer great stuff at a reasonable price to hundreds of customers.
You refuse to believe I’m Asian even though I’ve offered proof, you refuse to believe me and my sister make our stuff, (even though our family has made Thai fisherman pants for almost 40 years) and you refuse to stop harassing us.
You come off as uneducated about Thailand and just plain racist. Thai fisherman pants are all cut from a basic pattern. The measurements are around the same on every pair give or take a bit, they have to be to fold and hang correctly. You never bothered to ask us questions about our things, our lives, or anything about us. You just got stuck in your Western mentality of ’sweatshops’ when you know nothing about me, my sister, or our country. And no, we don’t have little Thai girls chained up in the basement.
You should be ashamed of yourself. My sister has spent all day crying because she needed the money we make on Etsy to pay bills. I have a ‘real job’ so it wasn’t as important for me. We will have to borrow money from our parents, which we have never wanted to do .
So the next time you get in your head there are ‘horrible, awful resellers on Etsy, well they MUST be becuase they’re in China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam’ etc. maybe you should stop and think. You just helped destroy somebody’s livelihood with your lies. Me and my sister never did anything to you or to the other people who got on their evil soapboxes. I hope you feel happy now.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
previous UEN coverage of shop/account deletions
http://etsynews.com/73/unwarrantedaccidental-shop-suspensions-sellers-be-warned/
http://etsynews.com/75/another-case-of-erroneous-shop-suspension/
http://etsynews.com/80/how-does-admin-handle-shop-suspensions/
other users who have had shops deleted without warning:
walkonthemoon
ScrapScrap
magicjelly
aorta/automaton
retroacttic
other relevant Etsy threads from the past:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5081030
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5081880
January 20th, 2008 at 2:42 am
Moxierings also had her shop deleted.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5363657
So that plus a few of the other JB mentioned, plus the ones I already know about, brings the total to 10 shop closures without warning.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:53 am
I’m going to try one more time to post this on here, then if it doesn’t post I’ll just post on our blog instead (thanks for the help eclipse :)
————————
Thanks for the nice comments. I just wanted to say we were kicked off for a ‘history of conflict’, the history of conflict was me reporting people in the forums who lied about our things and then getting kicked off for doing so. I was even told at one point by an Etsy admin that a ‘cease and desist’ letter would be a good thing to do. Then when I stated that in the forums the Etsy admin came in (obviously terrified her boss would be angry) saying no she hadn’t said that. Finally, on Friday, after I reported 2 people for posting nasty comments in the forums about us and another woman starting a whole topic about us, I was told at about 2:15 AM my time it would be dealt with by abuse@etsy.com. So I was so shocked to get back online at 7AM when I woke up to find we had been kicked off.
Hyena states she “You can find the exact same thai pants as theirs all over the net.” Ummm, no, actually you can’t. We make our own pants, they are heavy 100% cotton material and are all double-seamed (French seamed) - the ones made with traditional fabric, we serge it because it frays if we don’t. We also shorten our pants to any length that a customer wants. Do resellers do that? All you had to do was look at the hundreds of comments from our customers who raved about our things and our customer service but you wouldn’t do that because your head was stuck in a cloud of jealousy.
The ones you see ‘all over the net’ are pants that are either made of fake rayon (it’s actually nylon, not rayon and they sell at every market in Thailand) or a cotton fabric that is not as heavy as what we use. We get our fabric from our uncle who buys it from a friend in chiang Mai.
We’ve had 471 customers on Etsy with 365 (?)(sorry can’t remember the actual number) 100% positive feedbacks from people who LOVE our pants and can clearly see they are handmade. Yet people like Hyena have still insisted we don’t make our pants with no proof except ‘you can find the exact thai pants all over the internet’. She is somebody who has talked about ‘colonial expolitation’ and how much she hates it. Well my dear, the abuse we’ve had to deal with from you and others on Etsy forums just helped shut down a legitimate business on Etsy owned by two Thai women who did nothing wrong but make great stuff at a reasonable price to hundreds of customers. And what you did was not ‘colonial exploitation’?
You refuse to believe I’m Asian even though I’ve offered proof, you refuse to believe me and my sister make our stuff, (even though our family has made Thai fisherman pants for almost 40 years) and you refuse to stop harassing us.
You come off as uneducated about Thailand and just plain racist. Thai fisherman pants are all cut from a basic pattern. The measurements are around the same on every pair give or take a bit, they have to be to fold and hang correctly. You never bothered to ask us questions about our things, our lives, or anything about us. You just got stuck in your Western mentality of ’sweatshops’ when you know nothing about me, my sister, or our country. And no, we don’t have little Thai girls chained up in the basement either.
People like you should be ashamed of yourself. My sister has spent all day crying because she needed the money we make on Etsy to pay bills. I have a ‘real job’ so it wasn’t as important for me. We will have to borrow money from our parents, which we have never wanted to do .
So the next time you get in your head there are ‘horrible, awful resellers on Etsy, well they MUST be becuase they’re in China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam’ etc. maybe you should stop and think. You just helped destroy somebody’s livelihood with your lies. Me and my sister never did anything to you or to the other people who got on their evil soapboxes. I hope you feel happy now.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:13 am
Moxierings shop was at least restored pretty quickly. But the reason was something very minor and it was certainly overkill to delete the whole shop over one mistagged item.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Is that Emily who told you that?
That is really bizarre because Emily manages both support and abuse departments, so why would she need to transfer it to herself?
Every email I have ever sent to abuse was answered by Emily, so it’s strange she would need to “hand it off” to another department when it’s the same person handling it anyway.
I think they might be signing the emails just “abuse department” or “etsy” now, to hide the identity of the employee who is replying.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:45 am
This scares me. If we had a vacation/inactive button for the shops I would take all my items out and check tags to make sure I don’t go through what moxierings did, but alas, we don’t have that tool.
And I’ve tried staying out of the forums recently to avoid “conflict” but since i chimed in against Etsy policies previously I wonder if they’re going to take the money I’ve invested and leave me out to dry like they are to all the sellers they’re shutting down.
I know we’ve all called for better monitoring of resellers but this is absolutely ridiculous. To close down a shop without asking questions is just wrong. They’re turning into the gestapo and I’m left wondering why.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:58 am
I do want faster response to resellers but I don’t even think this is related to reselling, to be honest. I have flagged truly blatant things, things that say right in the listing they bought them at trade shows and they have commercial logos on them. Things that don’t need to be investigated at all because they ADMIT they didn’t make it, and those things are not removed!
So why would Etsy suddenly remove a seller when they have bought the pants personally twice and probably examined them under a microscope, and decided they WERE handmade? I think it has nothing to do with the items or the shop, they just got tired of dealing with all the disputes and complaints and they took the easy (cowardly) way out. Thaidreams did used to have some forum fights, mostly defending herself. Lately though she has not fought back in the forums but instead was reporting things privately like Etsy says to do. But Etsy got tired of all the emails so they just got rid of her, instead of dealing with the issues she was reporting.
It’s their usual method: sweep the dirt under the rug. Shut up the squeaky wheels.
January 20th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I’m sorry about what happened Thaidreams. Since I don’t know who closedshop is, I can’t really comment on their situation.
For clarity, I think it would be good for the UEN to mention in the story that all of the shops listed at the end have been reinstated except scrapscrap. i don’t know what happened in that situation, but all of the other deleted shops are open at this time.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Ah. I believe you now thai. I shall save up for pants without worry then.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
FYI, 3 shops have been muted from the forums yesterday, not temporary, permanently. One is Rivkasmom. The other two sell jewelry and clothing. Ah, democracy is dead.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I haven’t read everything.
But does we have proof of what Emily sent is true?
Is this the true reason SHE was quick out?
Anyhow, for what it worth, here is a honest answer:
http://recycledbyhyena.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-are-resellers-hurting-handmade.html
January 20th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
oh and to clear my name, and for what its worth too, I am not an etsy admin, I haven’t close your store and I didn’t even reported you!
When you did.
When you threaten to sue a seller on etsy.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Everyone seems to be wrapped up in this Thaidreams thing (as I am of course too!). I learned about Thaidreams from Halflying when the harassment first started for them and have been learning about it even more since it has started. I don’t have any doubt that her items are handmade and I haven’t even purchased them. I wish nothing but good luck to the sisters!
As far as my story is concerned, I still haven’t had a reply from admins. I guess in a way, I wasn’t expecting one. I feel that they took the cheap way out to delete my shop right before leaving for a holiday weekend. I had over 500 listings in my shop, 325 items sold and 200 positive feedback (1 neutral, from the girl who didn’t receive).
I am very disappointed that this could have been a nice shopping weekend for my shop and I was left without answers.
It is my 5 year anniversary with my husband today. This weekend was supposed to be fun and uplifting, but I have ruined it with my worries and many emails unanswered emails to Etsy.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
For me, the whole point of this is ETSY DELETED A STORE without any kind of warning and long AFTER Suphak had been in communication with Etsy about the bullying. She has been non-confrontational in the forums OF LATE and pens a NICE HELPFUL THREAD at which one of her antagonists comes in to spoil it with hateful remarks. SHE complains to Etsy ( note she did not FIGHT IN THE FORUMS but took the PROPER route of contacting abuse ) and she then wakes up to a CLOSED STORE !!??!
Sue has said things I don’t agree with in the forums. She has said things I thought were ( forum ) BANNABLE. But she DID NOTHING that warranted her SHOP being DELETED !!!
Her sister can’t pay her bills for God’s sake ! :( This is their livelihood ! )
Hyena, you have been a friend to me, but I have to disagree with you on this one.
Thai pants can be ” sold all over the internet ” just like T-shirts can. But you can STILL HAND MAKE a T-shirt, and I have close friends who have purchased from Suphak that SWEAR the stitching and fabric are superb, not some mass produced shit.
I don’t buy clothes on-line, but I COULD buy a pair of Suphak’s pants because the are reasonably priced, well made and FIT ANYONE ( thus very functional ). So they appeal to the masses. Given all that - it DOES NOT mean they are mass produced.
But THAT is all straying from the MAIN POINT.
Etsy can delete a shop just because they are sick of dealing with them ? Seems so.
Permanent forum muting is one thing. If you don’t like what I have to say, and it is your site, go ahead and ban me …. but we are talking about a VALID, THRIVING mostly positive feedback stores WITH NO PROOF of re-selling or with ONE sale gone awry ( Closedshop ).
THAT is the issue.
All I can really say to that is something Andy Mathis has said repeatedly : Get your own website, so IF this ever happens to you, you can direct your traffic there.
I pray every day that Etsy gets bought out and the evil moles get fired. I would return to the site, only under those conditions, and would tread softly in the forums, but keep most of my personal opinions on PRIVATE sites :P
The Etsy forums are a waste land now of fights, sob stories, LOOK AT MEEeeeee, and ” I can be grosser than you ” threads * rolls eyes *
I DON’T miss them.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Closedshop says:
As far as my story is concerned, I still haven’t had a reply from admins. I guess in a way, I wasn’t expecting one. I feel that they took the cheap way out to delete my shop right before leaving for a holiday weekend. I had over 500 listings in my shop, 325 items sold and 200 positive feedback (1 neutral, from the girl who didn’t receive).
I am SO SORRY for what happened to you Closedshop.
In your case, it seems, it was ETSY INCOMPETENCE again.
Hopefully, you WILL eventually be re-instated, but at what COST ?
I wish you the best in picking up the pieces :(
January 20th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Thank you so much Blondezilla. At this point, I am not even sure I want to return to Etsy. It is a GREAT source of income for my partner and I and I am not sure I can make the same amount of money anywhere else but with everything that I am reading (and experiencing), is it really worth it?
January 20th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Personally, I find it very hard to believe that a reseller would have been as visible in the forums as Thaidreams was. Wouldn’t a reseller, who obviously is getting enough business without being in the forums, want to remain unobtrusive on Etsy?
I have disagreed with many things Thaidreams has said in the forums, and found her a bit abrasive sometimes- but I’ve never seen her attack anyone in the forums, even when others were being very cruel and taking advantage of her silence to get in cheap shots. This really, truly disgusts me, and I can’t believe that Etsy has handled it as poorly as they have. Do you know what it reminds me of? When that French male teenager was raped in Iran, and the police told him not to report it, because he could be hanged for homosexuality.
I was also in the locked chat room, thinking that perhaps I would get some answers as to whether she was a reseller or not. I found nothing but spurious allegations with no hard proof. Saying that “you have evidence” (and that’s all that kept coming up the chat) really means nothing unless you already believe what is being said.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Just wanted to say that I am sorry that this happened to both closedshop and Thaidreams!
Closedshop, I’m particularly disturbed by your situation - here is why:
I and several others (I’m guessing about 15 people) had a really bad experience buying from an Etsy seller who disappeared without closing her shop or removing her listings (I know that nothing bad happened to this seller, by the way - she just decided to not fufill orders for whatever reason. She also emptied her PayPal account first so none of us could get a PayPal refund). I and several other people reported her to Etsy.
Etsy first removed all the items from her shop about 2 or 3 weeks after the reports and negative feedback started coming in (people were still buying during this time, by the way, so removing the items was necessary) But Etsy did not actually CLOSE (brick-wall) the shop until she reached less than 50% negative feedback for non-delivery. I did not get a response from admin re my non-delivery report for over 3 weeks - and it basically said “Sorry, we can’t contact this seller” - and that was it.
So…I don’t get it, basically - why the inconsistency? I have been feeling as if I have NO buyer protection through Etsy because of my experience - and then they close your shop for one non-delivery? (apparently, anyway!) I’m sorry this happened to you (and I think that it should be addressed even though it’s a “holiday”!) I certainly hope it can be worked out.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Editor hat on here:
I would like to remind everyone again that UEN is not the place to determine whether someone is guilty or not guilty of reselling. Let’s try to stick to the issue at hand, which is Etsy’s handling of shop closures and account terminations.
Editor hat off:
Closedshop, I was extremely shocked to hear that they would close your account over *one* buyer complaint and I sincerely hope that they rectify the situation ASAP. Try to stay positive - as has been pointed out, all but one of the people in the same situation previously has had their shop reinstated.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
katieh:
I had a similar experience as you. I purchased some items from a seller (a pretty popular seller overseas) that never arrived. I waited and waited, overseas shipping does take a bit longer, I don’t have a problem with that. I contacted her via convo’s several times to find out what was going on and all the convo’s went without answers. I finally went through her feedback to see that SEVERAL other people hadn’t received the items so I left a negative.
I contacted Etsy AND made a paypal claim, nothing came of either. I lost about $20.00 on that sale.
As far as my shop, I don’t know what happened. Do they put you into a log of “close this shop if _____” and just forgot to take me off the list when she emailed me last about closing the case? Who knows. I just wish I had answers at this point so that I can take care of this!
January 20th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
“Etsy can delete a shop just because they are sick of dealing with them ? Seems so.”
Hi guys. I haven’t read all the comments, and only came here because I was notified by email of a ping to a long-ago post of mine on this topic.
But since I’m here - as 27things has pointed out in multiple places, one of Etsy’s investors has written about the wisdom of getting rid of “problem” customers - those that take up too much time and resources, basically. I can’t find the link quickly, but I’m sure someone else can.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I am starting to believe “Emily” doesn’t really exist as one single human at Etsy. Though I cannot get into it here, I recently had a series of emails back and forth with “Emily” regarding an issue. It was soon clear different people were answering and not really paying attention to the chain of emails or what was previously written. All answers were not pertaining to my situation. It was very frustrating and I gave up because I had an idea that if I kept it up I would be blacklisted.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Interesting.
If people can log in under each other’s id, you have no idea who you are actually talking to, or who is actually doing all the forum policing and thread closing.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
To Hyena, who is continuing to show how ignorant you are with your comment about “how do we really know this was the real reason Etsy gave” -
I have posted the email we received from ‘Emily’ on our blog. I will also forward the email to anybody who is interested. It has a history of my complaints to Etsy about a couple of sellers - one of whom was Rivkasmom (nice news to hear she was at least banned from the forums!) Big difference though between being banned from the forums (and she legitimately deserved it) to having your entire shop closed down (and we did nothing!)
Oh and sorry, one correction. Emily did NOT say in the email she was going to forward my email to ‘abuse at etsy dot com’ , she said ‘community at etsy dot com’ - sorry I misread it :(
January 20th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
hey Thai dreams! How long have you been in Thailand?
January 20th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Hyena Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
oh and to clear my name, and for what its worth too, I am not an etsy admin, I haven’t close your store and I didn’t even reported you!
When you did.
When you threaten to sue a seller on etsy.
—————————-
Yes hyena, I sent a convo to a seller saying we would send them a ‘cease and desist’ letter if their lies and harassment didn’t stop, this was after NUMEROUS posts in the forums with lies about us and the things we make. This was what an Etsy admin told me to do months ago (then of course later denied it!) I do have her email though saying so.
There have been several sellers lately who have been posting in the forums that they have a lawyer and are threatening lawsuits to these abusive sellers. If these women don’t stop, one or some of them are eventually going to be facing lawsuits when they harass the wrong seller (and it might be us! our friend’s dad who is a lawyer and is APPALLED at the treatment we’ve received has offered us free legal work if we want to sue - we’re still considering it actually).
January 20th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Poompat, on and off for about 3 years lately. Well I was born here, moved to the US when I was 5 (can never remember HOW old I was :)then lived there till I was in my late 20s. Moved back to Thailand was here about two years, and wanted to go back to the US. As soon as I got back to the US I knew I’d made a mistake (my fiance is in Thailand too) so I only stayed a few months and came back to Thailand. I’ve been here now for about 18 months. My sister was the reverse. She moved to the US with us when she was 14, didn’t like it at all, so she only stayed a few months and moved back to thailand and lived with various aunts and our grandma. She’s been in thailand most of her life. That’s why she thinks I’m a total American LOL.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
We have no more “proof” that the email is real than you have proof that Elizabeth’s emails she posted were real. All 5 of the Etsy 5 got that identical email, so the 5 of us know it’s real but no one else has “proof”.
But I do believe Thaidreams posted the real email, because after enough correspondence with Emily, it just rings true to me. It’s exactly how Emily writes and how she handles things. (badly) Thai’s experience is similar enough to my own experience that I think she’s telling the truth and that the email she posted is real. That’s my own judgment call, based on my personal experience.
Regardless of the reselling issue, which honestly I think is irrelevant to the banning, this treatment should worry any Etsy user who emails abuse frequently. Even though Etsy TELLS you to handle conflicts by emailing them, they apparently give YOU a demerit every time you complain or report someone harassing you. So if you run crying to them too often, you will be punished rather than your abusers. I also find this consistent with my own experience. I rarely reported anything to abuse but I did report an Etsy admin for unprofessional posts right before they banned me. In fact several of the Etsy 5 had recently reported someone to abuse right before our banning. Nothing happened to the people we reported (different people), but we all got banned.
So people, think twice before you ask Etsy for help with your conflicts, because asking for their help will put you on their blacklist!!
closedshop I am sorry your case seems to be getting less attention, but I think maybe that’s good since you are still hoping to be resinstated and it would hurt your case to give any identifying details or to post your emails from Etsy. I do feel very bad for you but hopefully you can be reinstated, most of the other shops that were deleted over a transaction dispute were eventually reinstated. (but they never got apologies from Etsy, so don’t expect that!)
Actually your case should scare the average seller more than Thaidream’s case, because what happened to you truly could happen to anyone. You were not especially outspoken on the forums and didn’t get in fights, you just minded your business quietly and had one bad transaction out of hundreds of good ones.
That is EXACTLY how my correspondence with Emily was. She never answers the actual question you ask, and instead tells you something you already knew and did not ask, or something totally unrelated. I WISH I could post the whole email string here because it is quite ABSURD.
But I can’t post it while I still want to keep my store.
I guess if they ever brick-wall me, then that email and all my convos/emails/chats with other admins will be published. Sometimes I think that’s the only reason my shop is still there. As long as I still have something to lose, I will self-censor.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
I was asked earlier if I knew who was permanenetly banned from the forums besides Rivkasmom. I cannot send out going email currently so, I will answer here. I do know one person, she is a clothing designer, but wants to “out herself” when the time is right. The other person, I do not know, but she sells jewelry and has contacted an attorney and must remain unknown. I do not mean to be cryptic but 3 people were banned in 24 hours and this is scary.
Emily, is not Emily, she is an amalgam of customer service people who write under the same name. Other admins do the same thing.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
This is such a strange thing to witness. Aside from the fact that I recall admin locking threads out of spite, I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed such hostility from them. I wonder what’s really going on here.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:06 am
While it may be true that multiple admins send email under Emily’s name, she does appear to be an actual real person and there is a photo of her on the Etsy site. She’s not a fictitious person.
It’s unfortunate that whoever is writing under her name is giving her this bad reputation.
As for the other two permanently muted people, I am curious who they are since the 3 people I would have expected to get muted (people who had been in conflicts with Thaidreams) are still posting on Etsy today. Perhaps there are more mutings yet to come.
I think I will give some advice to people who think they may be at risk of a permanent muting: change your avatar now to something you will be happy with forever!
Because once you are muted, you can never change it again.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:04 am
“Emily, is not Emily, she is an amalgam of customer service people who write under the same name. Other admins do the same thing.”
Interesting, when I first came to Etsy I thought that was the meaning of RevolvingDork, like it was ‘dork of the day’ or just an account for various admins to use.
Unfortunately, I think he’s real.
As for the rest of this, well, this is what happens when 47 semi-incompetent 25 year olds get a few million dollars.
I can only assume that some of the recent weirdness (and this is just a portion) is related to outside pressure, like maybe from investors who are getting nervous about ever making a profit or even getting their money back.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:23 am
That would probably explain why there has been a lack of chatter coming from admin lately.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:32 am
I recently had to email customer support at etsy and it took several emails and several admin (from what I could see in the email chain) to fix what was basically a very simple problem. I was surprised by how unprofessional the first email response was. It was not rude or anything, but it sounded like it was written by a very young person who suggested that I fix the problem myself by sidestepping the system. What I needed (and what ended up actually happening after several emails) was for something to be changed in my account from etsy’s end.
Having been with etsy for almost two years now, and essentially on the way out as a seller, I don’t understand why A. they needed to hire so many people and B. why hiring so many people seems to have ultimately done so little to help the site. I have long thought that there was too much emphasis being placed on the EtsyLabs which a very small percentage of members can actually access. I was also a little irked when I started to see where my increased listing fees seemed to be going. Maybe I’m just square for my age, but even though I’m 26 years old I can’t understand something…Can someone please tell me why a place of business which deals with thousands of people’s money and livelyhoods needs a HALF PIPE??
January 21st, 2008 at 1:56 am
Sorry if that got off-topic, but one thing led to another in my mind. If a seller has their shop deleted, does that mean they are no longer to return as buyers on etsy? If so, that seems like insult added to injury….I would be annoyed but not devastated if my shop was accidentally closed, but I would really resent not being able to buy anything!
January 21st, 2008 at 2:28 am
Suphan, my heart goes out to you and your sister. I think racism says much more about the racist than it does about the target of that hatred but I’m not sure that this would qualify as racism so much as nationalism and that’s a much tougher nut to crack. I’m so sorry that you’ve been treated so poorly.
closedshop, I hope they reinstate your shop quickly.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:51 am
EmLouise, that’s correct, when they delete your account they usually tell you not to create any new accounts, so you can no longer buy or sell on Etsy. Now, unless you posted on the forum announcing “hey I am back and I am xxxxx”, Etsy probably would not know. They don’t seem to ban people by IP, because some banned people did make new accounts and Etsy only discovered them because they publicly outed themselves.
Many Etsy sellers are very willing to sell off-etsy as well, so it’s always a good idea to make connections with your favorite sellers through Flickr, myspace, blogger, email, mintd, etc. That way you can still contact them without an Etsy account.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:02 am
EmLouise, yes we were told not to buy anything on Etsy either :) NOT that we planned on doing after this!
I have several Etsy sellers I love and I will still buy from them but I’ll contact them OFF Etsy, have no intention of giving Etsy one cent of my money.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:25 am
It’s been said that the unnamed shop is still hoping to get its status restored - what about you, ThaiDreams? Are you still engaged in or waiting for further communication with Etsy? I think today is a U.S. holiday (and come to think of it, how ridiculous was it for them to start cleaning house at the end of the week right before a holiday?) Which is what I’m suspecting some of this is related to - rather than correct or streamline their own processes, they thought it would be easier to just rid themselves of users who they find themselves spending a lot of time dealing with.
Some amazing screw-ups have been done in Emily’s name, I’m not sure whether she deserves credit for all of it but she allows it to happen in her name so I have no sympathy for her. What they call customer service is unprofessional and inconsistent. This has been demonstrated with each and every issue that arises; they invariably take the wrong approach.
Hazel, that’s *exactly* what I first thought RevolvingDork meant as well, when I first visited the Etsy forum - that whatever techperson was available would answer your question with that ID. But then a clear voice emerged and I understood it was a single person. It’s a confusing user name.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:55 am
appalling!
i own a thaidreams headband and i cherish it! let me assure any and everyone that this is not a mass-produced item. it is very high quality! the item was individually and lovingly packaged and included heartfelt goodies! i was so touched when i opened the package! i loved the postcard so much i still have it on my refrigerator.
i can’t believe this decision! i have contemplated leaving etsy for some time now and i must say i will be giving it more thought. i cannot stand by and watch a member of our community be treated this way! this is a global community and that is part of what drew me to etsy. i have looked back through many of the threads involved here and i am deeply disappointed with this decision.
discriminatory, racist, and antagonistic ideas amongst a select few members directed towards successful sellers should never be tolerated. etsy touts its communal nature and there is nothing communal about allowing the singling out and ridiculing of members who are defending their names, and their hard-earned livelihoods!
i am a living breathing buyer and seller on etsy and this treatment is nonsense. we should be encouraging and supporting one another. i’m disgusted by the actions of different sellers in the etsy forums. you have my support thaidreams! i know that your product is handmade and has every right to be among every other item on etsy.
i have noticed an unsettling amount of silencing and deleting of members who are active in the community and raise their voices and concerns about important issues. i agree, a community will never be successful by cutting out those voices. they call out for change and allow for innovation. this kind of input is usually well though out, is highly important and should be treated as such!
sellers need to have protection against this kind of treatment. it makes me sick to my stomach that etsy as a company has enjoyed the fruits of thaidreams’ hard work and has just as quickly washed their hands of them! etsy was a company with good intentions i’m sure, but my respect has been severely diminished!
let me reiterate my outrage and say that thaidreams is better off! quality items such as these will do well no matter where they are! :) my condolences to you and your sister who have been severed from your earnings with little warning! if there is any way that i can be of assistance, please let me know!
all of my heart.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:03 am
let me point out the poetry of today being martin luther king jr. day in the us, although i’m sure it goes without saying.
heh.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:32 am
I think the easiest thing for thaidreams/Sue to do to clear her name is to take a current photo of her, Michelle, and Bow in Sue’s home studio where the pants are made.
Why do I suggest that? Unfortunately, after some investigation of my own, I can easily see where these accusations might be born. I am sure they are easily to put to rest with photographic proof and I am actually surprised thaidreams/sue hasn’t thought of showing a bit more of her studio like many artists online do to give a more personal view of her creative process. I personally adore those types of photos!
Just an idea….
January 21st, 2008 at 10:43 am
This has me freaked out & really confused. I just don’t understand how Etsy is running their business, there is seemingly no protocol. Packages get lost, packages get misaddressed, things happen, doesn’t the Etsy administrators always bring up the “were only human” comment. Well we sellers are only human & mistakes can happen. I thought these problems were for the Buyer & Seller to workout, I guess I was naive. I’m just amazed that the administration of Etsy would get so involved in a $3.50 transaction, they would find it necessary to close a Sellers shop. It’s absolutely crazy! I’m left feeling really freaked out. I just don’t feel comfortable with the idea that they can step in & dictate how I run my business or handle any problems that may arise between a customer & myself. I understand completely that there are extreme cases, but one lost package! Absolute madness.
I had to comment on EmLouise point. When I visited the Labs I had the same reaction, why do you need a half-pipe for christ sake! I’m so tired of the hipster aesthetic were so cool shit, if they really care about people like me being able to make a living from what we make then why can’t they provide the services to do just that & get their heads out of their butts & off the half pipe!
January 21st, 2008 at 10:50 am
Poompat - my understanding is that ThaiDreams’ store was closed due to a “history of conflicts”, and not for any other reason. Yes, the “history of conflicts” arose because some sellers targetted her. And yes, they targetted her because they believed her items were not handmade. However, Etsy did not close their store because Etsy believed their items were not handmade - they stated that it was because of the “history of conflicts”.
The main issue here is really that Etsy is closing stores without following due process and for reasons that seem invalid. It could happen to anyone, as it happened to the unnamed shop (closedshop) which apparently was closed due to a single transaction dispute.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:02 am
The fact that Sue has been so vigilant and constant in her communication spells out clearly that she is standing up for herself. Her posts are always well written out, and answers whatever accusations have been thrown her way. I can’t say the same for those who, for whatever reason, decided to antagonize her. The burden of proof should be on those who called her a liar. So far I have not seen anything from anyone other than a half-hearted blog post attempt by hyena to give a reason why she acted in such bad faith. It’s disheartening and disappointing. Compound that with the fact that those people who did the most antagonizing are still allowed to remain on Etsy is clearly a double standard that Etsy must address. As much as they would like to sweep this under the rug, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm
closedshop Says:
As far as my shop, I don’t know what happened. Do they put you into a log of “close this shop if _____” and just forgot to take me off the list when she emailed me last about closing the case? Who knows. I just wish I had answers at this point so that I can take care of this!
————————————————–
My impression on dealing with Etsy re the non-performing seller with less than 50% positive feedback is that they were not going to close the shop until they were able to either (1)contact the seller, or (2)give up on contacting the seller after repeated tries over several weeks. And in that case, I know that at least 10-15 other buyers contacted Etsy re the seller, and it STILL took weeks to close the shop - with an intermediate step of removing all items from the shop. That is why your case baffles me!
Again, I hope you get it worked out and can be reinstated quickly. I also hope you get a much faster response from Etsy admin than I did - I became very disenchanted with Etsy as a site after that episode - not to mention far less likely to buy from sellers who I don’t already “know”.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I have to chime in here. I use to sell under Twisted Stitches on Etsy, but closed shop due to unrelated issues. Back in November I registered a new user name, Second Time Around, because I was thinking about reopening a shop. I have been quietly watching things on Etsy over the last year to see how things were moving along.
I have been really disheartened by how things have gone on Etsy. It seems that the admin are really struggling and making some big misteps along the way. I’ve been talking with a few sellers who have left Etsy over the last year and many of them feel the same way as I do. Admin need to really rethink the way they handle things on the forums and the site as a whole, because they are putting themselves in a bad position.
I loved the idea of Etsy when things first got rolling. I understood that mistakes happen and as any new company would, they would have to learn how to do things along the way. Unfortunately, I’ve seen things getting worse and worse as days go by. Utter disregard for sellers and their businesses. A total lack of understanding and control when it comes to forum issues. People confused about use of funds/fees when it comes to advertising, etsylabs and most etsy related ventures.
My biggest complaint about Etsy is that they treat sellers like children and when they respond to them in the forums it’s like they completely pass over any logic and give some pre written response to tide things over until the thread either dies or is forgotten all together. Email responses are even worse it seems and show a complete lack of respect towards sellers.
It seems quite obvious that most sellers on the forums who attack and harrass other sellers/buyers are perfectly within reason to do so (according to admins logic), but when people whose businesses are being destroyed or slandered are immediately “dealt” with and made into the one doing wrong. I will never understand how admin have always talked about ” community and treating others fairly and with respect” and yet they never inforce their own guildlines and ban these people who target others.
I understand now why so many big name sellers have left Etsy to find other venues to sell on. After hearing their stories and talking in depth with them about their dealings with Etsy staff, it makes me realize that reopening on Etsy is not a good idea. If they can’t learn to do business properly and handle each case carefully, they are gonna lose a lot more people.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Reading all relative posts, and numerous forum threads, seriously reinforces my want to find a new location to sell from, instead of Etsy.
Between the rudeness in the threads, the repeated thread locking if you so much as even mention a bad experience with a buyer/seller, and the sudden closure with no warning of numerous shops, it generally turns me off to Etsy as far as selling.
I’ve had runins with Hyena, early on when I first joined Etsy. She seems to have a knack for rubbing people the wrong way.
Twisted Stitches Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 1:17 pm
“I understand now why so many big name sellers have left Etsy to find other venues to sell on. ”
This explains why I haven’t seen so many around either. And I can fully understand why as well, after all the reading I did today.
I’m thinking my hiatus will become permenant.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:33 pm
The angst in the Etsy forums says it all.
I looked at a couple of older threads last night, around the time of the Constitution debacle. Same feelings from members, just not quite as intense.
You would think that things would be improving, you would think that the Etsy Decision-Makers would be learning from their mistakes. You’d be wrong.
It is just an ongoing comedy (tragedy!) of errors.
I work for a company that has less head office employees than Etsy (they have 36 stores around the country) and when a customer has a complaint or concern, there is a very clear chain of command. They are given clear indications of the process and are worked with to reach a satisfactory outcome.
When there is an issue with Etsy, it’s a game of chance. Maybe you’ll get a response. Maybe it will be dealt with. Maybe you’ll just have your shop closed.
If you create an air of fear and uncertainty, that is sure to shut people up….they’ll be simply too scared to speak up. Brilliant! I don’t know why every company doesn’t adopt that line of thinking. Oh, that’s right. Because it’s INSANE.
For the love of god, will someone buy the damn thing and get a real management team in, that are experienced in management, public relations/customer service and implementing site changes that address basic needs (Flash is great but when it’s all you have, it’s like sprinkling glitter on a turd. It’s still shit, it just looks prettier).
Dawanda.com is where more and more people are migrating to. I wonder why…
January 21st, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Meringue,
You’re correct about Dawanda. We got email from one of their admin yesterday absolutely assuring us that harassment and abuse like we received on Etsy will NEVER be tolerated on Dawanda. They are welcoming us over there with open arms and even offering to do a special feature or promotion on us. We are sending an email to ALL 400 plus of our Etsy customers this week telling them we’ve moved to Dawanda and why.
Dawanda also has a policy that if you do anything to damage another seller’s business you’ll get kicked off permanently. Etsy should have had this, it’s just common sense.
We’ve also had two sales on Dawanda this weekend from people on Etsy who are angry with what happened to us on Etsy. We fully intend to promote the HECK out of our Dawanda shop.
IMO, Dawanda is going to be the big handmade shop on the internet. It’s run with German efficiency and has an admin that actually has a CLUE about customer service. I don’t think Etsy will even be around in a couple of years. It’s already being run with an air of panic - admin running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I’m now putting aside a couple of hours every day to promote Dawanda all over the internet, and will be telling everybody I come across to never shop on Etsy.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Thai, as a buyer only, I am glad to know where you will be. It is a sad state of affairs at etsy. Most effort is put into damage control and not running an efficient business model.
I wonder on a daily basis if the investors of etsy read what goes on in the forums, read the inept answers by admin that constantly contridict themselves. Is their money safe? Will the business continue like this.
7 great sellers gone. Others banned from the forums. What next?
January 21st, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I was contacted a few months ago by Dawanda admin, through Trunkt. They were professional and a pleasure to deal with. I only regret that I didn’t give my Dawanda shop more attention before Christmas.
That will change in the next two weeks.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Suphan, I understand your anger and I’m in your corner but please don’t hurt the sellers on Etsy? The admin does a fine job of that.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I must admit that after taking a long break from etsy after the new version was released, I was shocked to read an article about it which stated that they still were not turning a profit. Huh? You mean that with hundreds of thousands of members, a doubling of the listing fee, items being listed and sold every second, they still weren’t managing to generate a profit? When and why had the staff grown to fifty?? Not knowing enough about dot.com start-ups I chalked it up to my own ignorance and started visiting etsy more frequently, browsing the forums and eventually found this site. Now I understand. I’m going to start exploring other venues as well, and when I have enough saved, can hopefully buy a pair of those beautiful fisherman pants from Sue and Bow.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Thaidreams, Please don’t tell people not to shop on etsy.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:40 pm
There are a number of people I know who absolutely refuse to purchase anything on Etsy anymore. There are others who prefer not to if they can possibly avoid it. Plus there are more still who are joining their ranks on a daily basis. Many of those people will try to contact Etsy sellers to arrange to buy from them in other ways, but that may not always happen.
If you’re worried about people not shopping from you because you sell on Etsy, then the very best thing you can do for your business is to diversify. Look at other venues or even at running your own shop and build up your web presence to be more than just one outlet.
This is also important to do because - as you can see - that one shop can be shut down in the blink of an eye for the most unfair reasons.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:25 pm
To those who say I shouldn’t tell people not to shop on Etsy - You cannot honestly expect us to support Etsy in any shape or form after what they’ve done to us. However, I will definitely tell my friends to look at Etsy sellers shops (there are soooo many amazing people on there) and then see if they have OFF Etsy venues where their items can be purchased instead.
Meringue, Dawanda is the most professional place we’ve ever dealt with. Also wanted to tell you, check out bigcartel - just had another buyer buy from us on Dawanda today because she heard about our problems from somebody on bigcartel - bigcartel is a place where you can open up your own shop for NO fees for the basic package and NO commissions. Some awesome sellers on there too! And YOU CAN CHOOSE YOUR OWN CURRENCY - aren’t you just salivating already? LOL
January 21st, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Simone, as you suggested to us a LONG time ago and we never got around to doing, we are now going to also check out Mintd and open a small shop there. It looks really nice and has some great features!
January 21st, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Poompat I also had the fleeting idea that Thaidreams could post a photo of her and her sister with some sort of sign like “Hi Etsy members” to prove it was current, and not just some random googled photo of two Thai girls. But I didn’t ask her to do that because honestly it *is* irrelevant to the issue of her being kicked off Etsy. It might prove her case against the Etsy users who think she’s not who she says she is, but that is a totally separate issue from the Etsy admin’s handling of her case. She was not banned from Etsy for reselling and in fact Etsy bought her pants twice and declared them handmade. It Etsy thought she and Michelle were the same person, then Michelle’s 2 shops would also be kicked off.(they are not) That whole issue really is a red herring. It is only related because it is the sorce of the “forum conflicts”, but it’s not the reason she got kicked off Etsy so proving herself to be Thai and not British should not be required to be treated fairly by Etsy.
I don’t think she is a reseller, but even if she was, it would not justify the treatment Etsy has shown her, nor would it justify the extent of the persecution and “investigation” she has undergone from Etsy members. That would have been out of line EVEN IF she was guilty of reselling.
I see obvious resellers on Etsy all the time which I flag and nothing is done. It’s frustrating, but I sigh and move on. It is never appropriate to take the law into your own hands, declare yourself judge, jury and executioner. Reselling is not murder. There are lines of civilized behavior that you just don’t cross, and I feel those lines have been crossed in this overzealous anti-reseller witch hunt. These conflicts should have been nipped in the bud by Etsy when they first began and should NEVER have been allowed to escalate to the state they were in last week.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:12 pm
The feel of Etsy really has changed as they have grown. I have only been selling for a year, but I can sense a shift in mentality in that time.
SCARY! I am so sorry that this is happening and it really freaks me out! I had a very large shipment of items go missing this December. I did my best to contact all of the buyers involved, but some slipped through the cracks and I am still getting convos from buyers who did not receive their package. I have always given the option of reshipping or refunding the sale, but I can’t believe that all they would have to do is complain to Etsy and my shop could be shut down for a postal error that I am doing my best to rectify.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:46 am
I think it’s probably true about the shift in mentality to a degree, although I wonder if perhaps it was always there potentially, but has only become really apparent as the site has grown and the management have struggled to deal with it.
Recently I was thinking back to the launch of V2 of Etsy - which had its first anniversary last November. At the time I had a huge amount of sympathy for and empathy with Etsy. In November 2006 they were a very small team doing a very big job. And they were stuck between a rock and hard place - the old site was never going to make it through the Christmas rush and the new site really wasn’t remotely ready to go (even if they’d convinced themselves that it was).
I was wondering recently if that empathy and the support I expressed for them at the time was misplaced. But I honestly don’t think it was. I work in a similar field (also with very limited capacity) and I at least have a vague idea of what they were dealing with and how stressful and difficult it must have been.
But since then, they’ve lost that support from me and so many other people. Now there is a huge team of people working on the site - far more than I personally think they need - and yet things only seem to have gone backwards since the launch of V2.
In a technical sense there are issues which were flagged on the very day that V2 went live which are still issues. There are things we were told were temporarily missing, but which would be ‘back soon’ and yet are still missing over a year later. There are a whole lot of new toys and superficial fixes without any serious improvement in some of the major functionality problems. It’s also become apparent to those who know a thing or two about this stuff that part of the problem is simply lack of knowledge and skills in at least some areas that are important to get right - with all the staff they have now surely that could have been well and truly overcome.
Additionally, communication with members is now appallingly bad, the addition of more rules and structure to the community has only resulted in so many unfair and inconsistent outcomes (such as what we’re discussing right here), the community feels largely like it’s not being listened to anymore and generally I get the distinct impression that Etsy is an organisation which feels it is at war with much of its own membership - or at least one which can’t stand most of us!
There is a huge disparity between how many (not all, certainly) people felt at the time of V2 launching and how they feel now. Sure, some good things have happened since then (such as the Treasury, for instance - I think it’s great), but an awful lot of very bad or at least unhelpful stuff has pretty much made the good stuff seem fairly insignificant. A great opportunity to capitalise upon that support has been wasted.
It’s a very sad state of affairs for what at its heart remains a very good idea.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:31 am
I’ve just opened up a Dawanda shop. It’s a bit difficult to navigate, but I LOVE how easy it is list there! I only have 1 item up, but I’m going to be putting in more soon!
AND I CAN USE INTERNATIONAL CHARACTERS! YIPPEE!
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:25 am
thaidreams - “I don’t think Etsy will even be around in a couple of years. It’s already being run with an air of panic ”
I get such a strange feeling from them lately.
Ha, I’m sure you do too! Sorry about this, I’m sure you’re pretty super unhappy with this bunch of gonads.
They make me feel nervous.
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:46 am
Re: Thaidreams shop. I know that the ousting wasn’t due to questionable merchandise (although alot of people, both buyers and sellers, found the items suspect),but to say that it is partially due to racism is reeeeeally stretching it, don’t you think? They could have come from ANYWHERE. Many people came to that conclusion, not because they are in Asia,but because there were a couple of other resllers on etsy (now gone) who had some of the same stuff (or what certainly looked like the same stuff). The same stuff that is all over the internet and on ebay. And it wasn’t just the pants, although that is what is always brought up. It is the bags,the embroidered scarves, and some of the other goods. Remember- alot of mass produced stuff overseas IS handmade.
Anyway, people will believe what they want to believe. I in no way begrudge anyone from trying to make a living (apart from trying to sell mass produced stuff in a handmade market where real artists are struggling to keep afloat) and I do agree that the way in which they were shut down was not cool at all.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:32 am
BeeQueen, much of it is most definitely racist when you read thread on the issue and see phrases like, “Chinese crap” brought up time and time again.
It’s racist and offensive.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:07 am
I think nationalism might be better, or anti-nationalism.
I doubt Thai would have been as suspect by other Etsy sellers if she happened to live in Idaho.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
I rarely comment here, but I just want to echo Simone’s comment (110): When etsy introduced V2 in November 2006, there was much sympathy for the cause. They were too few people trying to handle a too big task. The original idea behind the site was still clearly visible. I’m not sure the idea is still … anything … at Etsy anymore. The idea was great, honorable! The sentiment is not the same amongst users anymore.
‘At war with its users’ — it does feel like that, yep.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 am
BeeQueen, Thai’s treatment by etsy was the epitome of racism. I’m not sure how you cannot see that. And, if you read her blog you will see her shop was not closed for reselling, it was her behaviour on the forums. At least that was what Emily, or whoever was pretending to be Emily that day, said.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 am
While it is tempting to look for ulterior motives and conspiracies, it really is not necessary when there is a much simpler explanation: Etsy does not have a consistent policy on dealing with its users. The rules they follow are ad hoc, and not enforced across the board.
It is human nature when looking at an apparently random pattern to try to find order in it. Etsy’s policies are erratic, making us wonder what is behind it all. Some draw complicated conclusions. The conclusion I draw is that we’re dealing with a lot of young people who have very little experience with the real world of business and customer service making snap decisions based on ever changing criteria. One day it’s “zero tolerance,” the next day admins are joining in on bashing threads or even calling out users.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:48 am
about the racism bit. you see, we don’t have a separate word for ‘a system of discrimination based on one’s national origin’ so we have to use ‘racism’ instead
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:53 am
Simone: I agree with everything you said. V2 really made me take a closer look at Etsy and the staff behind it. What irked me about it all was that such big promises were made and never delivered.
This is off topic, but alchemy was such a big part of my business on Etsy. I was so sad that they never brought it back. So many people wanted it to return, but again, Etsy felt that the site needed more bells and whistles, rather than real tools that could benefit our stores and businesses.
While I think certain creations are fun and “neat”, I just wish Etsy could focus on the things that are really going to help the businesses and not just “gadgets” to keep new people busy on the site. After all, Etsy is suppose to be a place to sell things, not play.
I have been doing some research on Dawanda, Big cartel and a few other sites and from what I have seen, many people who are selling on Etsy are slowly moving their stores over to these other sites. I have heard fantastic things about Dawanda. I have also heard that the staff over there is very vigilant about customer service. One thing Etsy seems to NOT care about.
Sadly, I think Etsy is running out of steam and it looks as though they are not willing to listen (although they say they do) to the complaints.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
When you constantly ignore customer service and treat your customers like morons, it doesn’t matter how ‘cool’ your site is……because people will get fed up and move on to other companies that treat them with respect.
For me, I find the total lack of respect for Etsy members (as a whole) to be quite telling in how inexperienced Admin actually are. Sure, there are some who are consistently thoughtful and sincere in their forum postings or email responses but there are others who are loose canons, who treat it like a game. As someone who has worked in customer service for years, it is the most puzzling and arrogant approach to customer relations I have ever witnessed.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:53 pm
closedshop’s real shop is still closed too, btw. I just checked and hit a brick wall.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Here’s something you may all find amusing: the automated answer system at Bell Telephone Canada goes by the name “Emily”. A cold, compassionless, faceless automaton that repeats herself, doesn’t answer the questions you ask, and who you frequently want to punch in the face.
http://www.bce.ca/en/news/releases/bc/2003/01/16/69697.html
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
“closedshop’s real shop is still closed too, btw. I just checked and hit a brick wall.”
It’s closed for good.. They are “refusing” service to me after something I am trying to clear up and doing the responsible thing as a shop owner. I won’t be back to Etsy.
I am going to focus on promoting my own shop, not Etsy.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:56 pm
closedshop, that is unconscionable. Truly.
There is an ongoing thread in Help that asks the very pointed question of whether a shop can be closed based on non-delivery of an item. http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5429569
Here is a compound admin quote, from page two:
Obviously, what admin says and what admin does are two entirely different things. (Evidence of what dingo was talking about on the previous page).
Unbelievable.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 pm
closedshop, I’m so sorry to hear that this has happened - the fact of it happening in error didn’t surprise me at all, but the fact that it’s been made permanent is shocking. Have they given you any additional reasons for ‘refusing service’ apart from non-delivery of that one item? I can’t help but wonder if you’ve been penalised further for speaking up, even though you’ve done it anonymously :(
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Closedshop, I’m horrified. They clearly seem to be punishing you for speaking publicly, not to mention attempting to cow anyone else into silence who experiences the same thing.
Stella also had this to say in Buttonempire’s thread:
stellaloella says:
If a seller has publicly posted policies about returns,
refunds, etc. then YES, Etsy will honor those personal shop
policies. However, we will ask to confirm that the item was
sent — which is why I mentioned proof of shipping. (This
is to protect everyone from fraud, not to punish sellers in
any way.)
I wonder if she knows she’s fibbing. It sucks to be the messenger.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Beequeen Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:46 am
Re: Thaidreams shop. I know that the ousting wasn’t due to questionable merchandise (although alot of people, both buyers and sellers, found the items suspect),but to say that it is partially due to racism is reeeeeally stretching it, don’t you think? They could have come from ANYWHERE. Many people came to that conclusion, not because they are in Asia,but because there were a couple of other resllers on etsy (now gone) who had some of the same stuff (or what certainly looked like the same stuff). The same stuff that is all over the internet and on ebay. And it wasn’t just the pants, although that is what is always brought up. It is the bags,the embroidered scarves, and some of the other goods.
————
Beequeen, HUH????
First of all, we don’t sell ‘embroidered scarves’. I’ve made 2 scarves in the whole time we’ve been on Etsy - they were batik scarves where I used batik fabric, cut the scarf to size and handsewed the silk fringe on it. And our customers who bought them loved them! And bags? I make elephant bags, which my family has made for YEARS (we have a shop at a local market here) and reversible bags, every bag is different, no bag uses the same fabric or design. And EVERY customer that has bought one of my bags has loved it.
And for you to say ‘buyers’ found the items suspect? We had a higher percentage of feedback from our buyers than most people did on Etsy (About 70% left positive feedback, the rest didn’t leave anything). We have a much higher percentage of feedback than sellers like the black apple. We’ve had NO negative feedbacks in almost a year on Etsy, with almost 500 things sold.
This again goes back to the pure ignorance of so many Westerners about Asian culture. My family has been in business for almost 40 years, starting with my grandmother and aunt. My mother used to make clothes before we moved to the US. My sister has been sewing and helping my grandmother with her shop since she was 10 years old. EVERYTHING we make is handmade by us. We decided to make Thai fisherman pants because they sell well. We use a much heavier fabric than is used on the cheap ones at the markets, (the cheap ones are usually fake ‘rayon’ and they die after 3 washes). We French seam every seam, we serge the seams on the pants where we use fabric that frays. We had HUNDREDS of feedback, many from people who sew themselves, saying “There is NO way these pants are mass-produced”.
We’ve had customers who have bought 10 pairs of pants, because they’ve loved them so much. We have one customer in the Netherlands who cannot get enough of our pants and was so happy today when he found us on Dawanda.
Yet we’ve had stupid people on Etsy say, “why don’t you make these pants using flower fabrics if you’re not resellers?” Because we’ve done this in the past and they DON’T SELL. Most people want plain Thai fisherman pants not flowered fabrics or stripes.
And this is what is so annoying! All these people spouting off about our products have never bought one, refuse to listen to what our buyers are saying, in feedback and make their ‘resellers’ claim based on nothing more than we live in Thailand.
I’ve even hand painted 3 pairs of pants with gold buddhas, and that made no difference to the ‘reseller’ idiots either.
Honestly, GET A CLUE! Resellers don’t have such amazing feedback (even from etsy admin who bought our pants), resellers don’t offer incredible customer service, RESELLERS DON’T ALTER THE LENGTH OF THE PANTS THEY MAKE!
Why is this so difficult to understand? I feel like I”m talking to some people sometimes who must have the mental IQ of an imbecile. Either that, or they’ve never left the US and have been so brainwashed with the ’sweatshops in Asia’ propoganda that the US government is always pushing out, that they’ll never listen to reason.
Anyway, whatever, I”m not responding to stupid statements anymore. We have hundreds of happy customers, we love making the things we do, we’ve been welcome with open army by Dawanda. So Etsy can go f*ck themselves! :)
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:37 pm
closedshop, soooooo sorry you have had no satisfaction from Etsy. We got no response to our email asking why we had been kicked off either.
Don’t worry - open a shop on Dawanda, they are FABULOUS, and look at bigcartel.com. FREE shops and NO COMMISSIONS. We’ve had 4 sales on Dawanda in 3 days and Dawanda admin are unbelievable! Plus listing on Dawanda is EASY and the only thing you pay on Dawanda are fees, so NO listing fees.
I predict Dawanda will be HUGE soon, and Etsy will have died a strangled death. And me, I’ll be happy ringing the death nell :)
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:41 pm
hahahaha - in my post 128, I meant to say “we have been welcomed with open ARMS by Dawanda” and not ‘open army’. Don’t think they had guns??? :)
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Thaidreams, I interpreted Beequeen’s comment to mean that it is the commonalities between items like pants, bags, scarves, etc from sellers in Asia that leads some people to believe they all come from the same factory sources (however wrong that is). I don’t think she was talking about your shop specifically in the latter half of the paragraph.
I absolutely think there is geographical bias alive and well on Etsy. I cringe when I see phrases like “cheap Chinese crap”. It’s offensive and ignorant. There’s plenty of cheap American-made crap out there too.
I do think it’s worth pointing out though that quite a few of Thai’s main antagonizers in the forums are not American, they are European or British.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
“Remember- alot of mass produced stuff overseas IS handmade.”
Beequeen, you undoubtedly don’t even realise this, but that statement alone shows that you’re looking at things from a very biased perspective. I’m a white person living in a western democracy who speaks English as my mother tongue, yet even to me *you* are almost certainly ‘overseas’.
There simply is no concrete evidence to back up the accusations being made and it’s wrong to potentially damage someone’s business publicly based on what really is nothing more than speculation brought about by personality clashes, uninformed opinions, rampant gossip, wild assumptions and some strange conspiracy theories.
Of course it’s even more wrong for the victim of this sort of thing to be punished purely for being the victim of it, which is the main issue here.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:37 pm
I also would not be caught dead in flowered pants.
Just thought I’d throw that in there. Making an item no one wants just to “prove” it’s handmade seems silly. But I have seen your stencilled pants and I think I’ve seen you make custom color-blocking orders for people, like purple and black? I think I saw you on the forums once asking people what color combinations people would like. If you were buying the pants from a factory instead of making them, I don’t see how you’d be able to offer the unique one-off color combos and custom hemming, etc.
I’m disappointed to see so much focus on debating the reseller issue and not the real issue which is Etsy’s irrational and unfair treatment of it’s members. Maybe it’s to do with the elections coming up in the US this year, so much stupid rhetoric about immigration. Red herrings abound.
IT’S THE WAR, DUMMY.
(and the recession)
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:39 pm
p.s. the “dummy” is not directed to anyone here, just to the average US voter who is being fed a load of bullcrap. Sorry to tangent!
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:42 pm
JB, perfect timing. this would interject some humor in those political conversations:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=9086530
(sorry, couldn’t resist) ;)
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Hahaha soap that is awesome!
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
JB Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:37 pm
I also would not be caught dead in flowered pants.
Just thought I’d throw that in there. Making an item no one wants just to “prove” it’s handmade seems silly. But I have seen your stencilled pants and I think I’ve seen you make custom color-blocking orders for people, like purple and black? I think I saw you on the forums once asking people what color combinations people would like. If you were buying the pants from a factory instead of making them, I don’t see how you’d be able to offer the unique one-off color combos and custom hemming, etc.
I’m disappointed to see so much focus on debating the reseller issue and not the real issue which is Etsy’s irrational and unfair treatment of it’s members. Maybe it’s to do with the elections coming up in the US this year, so much stupid rhetoric about immigration. Red herrings abound.
IT’S THE WAR, DUMMY.
(and the recession)
————-
JB, yes the person who said why didn’t we make things in other fabrics was a sewer who’s stuff didn’t sell. What does that tell you? We found a format that works and she didn’t. So she would rather we changed our fabrics just to PROVE we’re not resellers and just so our stuff wouldn’t sell either :)
And yes agree with you on the ‘its the war, dummy’ - I’m voting for Hillary and very happy about it. Cant’ wait to get that idiot out of the white house, he’s destroyed America’s reputation overseas and the US economy.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 pm
back on the issue of closedshop’s case,
there was this thread started today
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5429569
replied to by Stella on page 2, but she only gives the Etsy “general” policy which is almost meaningless since they can deviate from that policy at will. (whim?)
The handling of closedshop’s specific case is not consistent with the “general” policy, and Etsy will not discuss specific cases.
also this general question of the OP (buttonempire) is not precisely identical to closedshop’s case. The OP’s theoretical question is regarding a lost package that the seller refuses to replace or refund, according to their shop policy. Closedshop did resend the lost item and was fully willing to give a refund too, but was never given the chance. (the item was only worth $3 so it would be silly for a shop with 100% positive feedback to refuse such a small refund and risk blemishing their perfect feedback, just as it would be absurd to think a shop with such an established and successful business to deliberately “steal” $3.00)
Her shop was closed before she had the chance to refund.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:41 pm
what the hell. No one should be telling anyone to file an FBI report unless the seller has lied and refused to send items. There needs to set up some specific steps people go through to complain so that people can’t get deleted with no warning.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I am ready to tell my whole story. This may get people angry or upset, but this is the honest truth. I am taking FULL responsibility for what has happened and even the thought of reinstating me is crossing Etsy’s mind.
My name is Vanessa. I am a buyer AND a seller at Etsy.com. I used to own 2 shops on Etsy, thepromoshop.etsy.com and heyprettycupcake.etsy.com. I have sold over 600 items between the 2 and had nothing but awesome feedback until a few months ago when things got rough. In December of 2007, we found out that my husband was being transferred to another state with very little notice. I posted a shop announcement and an email reply for thepromoshop saying that I will be gone for a good part of December and January. I also put a note up on heyprettycupcake.etsy.com AND heyprettycupcake.com stating that shipping will be delayed a bit because of our move even though I was having my foster sister take care of the HPC shop until I was able to.
Shortly after my move and new years, my husband got really sick. He was rushed to the hospital on several occasions. I was trying to unpack my life in my new home and get everything set up to start on orders again, but my husband was my first priority. In the meantime, my foster sister posted a message on thepromoshop saying that I will be a little longer than expected due to my husband’s illness. Things were settling down and I was about to jump into opening back up thepromoshop and take care of my duties. That’s when my foster sister got an email from Etsy saying that heyprettycupcake had been shut down due to a non delivery of a $3.50 item. They didn’t bother to say that it was being shut down due to non delivery from The Promo Shop. She emailed them back, asking why HPC was being shut down because of this item, which I had already talked to them about and they had told me that they would drop the case because the girl wasn’t responding.
Of course this was on a holiday weekend and we wouldn’t get any replies. I tried to login to thepromoshop so that I can message my customers and tell them what has been going on so that I can refund or work on their orders. The Promo Shop had been shut down as well. I sent them an email, explaining what has been going on and waited for a reply.
Monday finally comes around and they email me back. They told me that they will open my shop for 4 hours so that I can get the information that I need to take care of my customers. I sent a convo to all my customers (The Promo Shop customers) and ask Etsy if there was anyway to have hey pretty cupcake reinstated, as my foster sister was taking care of that shop and it really has nothing to do with the promo shop. 99.9% of my customers were sympathetic and understand what was going on. They are thankful that I have come back to make everything right.
They told me they will not open HPC back up and I asked them how I would go about doing this. They told me they are very sorry but they are refusing service to me any longer. This is my life, my job, the way that I feed my family, put clothes on my back and take care of MY finances. They are telling me that they are REFUSING my services?
Up until my move I had 100% positive feedback in BOTH stores, paid my bills on time, got orders out in time and now I am a problem for them? I do understand that my lack of communication was wrong and that I should have contacted my customers (other than the shop announcement). I am giving REFUNDS to my customers and they are refusing service to me!? I have NEVER EVER been refunded from someone that had ripped me off before let alone got a convo/email explaining what happened and etsy has never closed down their shop because of it.
I am disgusted at Etsy’s behavior. I am here to make things right, which any normal human being will do and my shop is being closed because of this.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 pm
isn’t crossing etsy’s mind.. sorry
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Three words for you-
Better Business Bureau.
File a complaint against them. Might not get you anywhere, but at least there will be something on file for when it happens again, because it most likely will.
Them refusing to deal with you in any way is very unprofessional.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:03 am
Thank you for telling the rest of your story, Vanessa. I hadn’t heard the full details about your husband’s illness or the second shop name, but I am glad you’re revealing them now.
Some pages from google’s cache to back up your story.
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:etdd0b0VO3UJ:www.etsy.com/shop.php%3Fuser_id%3D5175178+thepromoshop+etsy&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
this was The promo shop on Jan 17
You can see the message to buyers promising refunds and explanation of the late orders.
Feedback 275, 92% positive
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:Un-FmMZ6EqAJ:heyprettycupcake.etsy.com/+heyprettycupcake+etsy&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
this was heyprettycupcake on Jan 18
Feedback 200, 100% positive
So, to be fair to Etsy, this closure was over more than the single lost item from heyprettycupcake. (although they didn’t make that clear to you at first, which is their typical communication style)
There were multiple non-received orders from the promoshop and the feedback there is less than 100%.
But in your defense, I can see that you did remove all items from the promoshop, to prevent any new sales that you could not fulfill. And you showed a good faith announcement to make restitution on all outstanding orders.
And as Etsy is is fond of saying, behind every avatar is a human being. Behind your avatar was a human being with critical real-life issues which unfortunately impacted your ability to meet your obligations. I think a bit of empathy and compassion is not too much to ask from a company which continually trumpets how human and caring and “nice” they are. People make mistakes. You were trying to fix yours. (although, I am not sure that caring for an ill husband is really a “mistake”, it’s part of the marriage vows!)You got coldly shut down before you had any chance to do that.
Etsy should be ashamed. I hope none of them ever have a seriously ill spouse or child and have to go through what you did.
I hope your husband is recovering.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:32 am
The thing that astounds me the most about this is that Etsy claims to be all about helping individual designers/craftspeople to earn a living from the things they make. But this means they should be understanding and supportive of the inherent risks involved in running an extremely small business.
I’m sure almost all of us operate with ourselves doing everything and having little or no external help. So if something goes wrong in our lives it can easily be catastrophic in a business sense, even if only in the short term.
Provided you show good faith, work to resolve problems with customers and act responsibly in the face of these sorts issues as soon as you can, Etsy should be as supportive as they can be if they are serious about what is supposed to be the core aim of their business.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:37 am
Someday, I hope I quit being shocked by the apparent disconnect between what Etsy Corp proports to support and believe and their actual actions.
To think, that a small business person, such as closedshop could have their means of making a living taken away so abruptly, given that a shop announcement was posted and the seller was making efforts to refund monies to customers, is beyond me.
It is obvious this all took place over a certain period of time, why can’t the person(s) reviewing cases at Etsy see this and work with the seller, be patient.. perhaps removing items from sale until all refunds have been issued and all buyers satisfied.
Her husband was ill, AND they had just relocated, so he was ill in a new town!!! I can’t understand why this is so difficult for people to understand.
Sure, I too have had transactions online that seemed to take forever or that communication with the seller was non-existent… but people, we are not talking about *LIVE-GIVING MEDICATIONS HERE* or things that people can’t live without. And, from what I can determine, they were not even large $$$ transactions, so, let’s keep our heads about us and try to show a bit of compassion.
I would hope that Etsy Corp would reconsider their refusal to provide service to Closed Shop and allow her to re-establish her shop once all refunds have been received by her past buyers.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:51 am
Concerned Etsian Says:
Her husband was ill, AND they had just relocated, so he was ill in a new town!!! I can’t understand why this is so difficult for people to understand.
I am not tootin my own horn or saying that my lack of communication was right but I couldn’t understand that either. When I finally got into my account to message my customers people were saying things like “I KNOW YOUR NEW TOWN HAS EMAIL” and stuff like that. What they DON’T realize is that when you move to a new place, not everything is hooked up. It took several weeks for comcast to come out here and hook us up.
I put a shop announcement for a reason, saying I will be back mid january because I knew we weren’t going to get internet right away. Let alone the fact that it was Christmas AND new years and people probably wouldn’t have gotten back to me until after January.
The things that I had to go through while my husband was ill would make anyone want to make sure that their life is kosher before continuing back onto the drama. I had to drive him to the ER in a brand new town, while he is unconscious in the front seat, only to get lost and have to have the ambulance come to get him.
Even if Etsy decides to reinstate my shop, I am going to take a few to sit back and think if I want to even be there anymore. I know that 1 shop off of Etsy isn’t going to hurt their site, but I will sleep better at night knowing that I am not paying my hard earned money to someone who is going to walk all over me if something even more serious happens in my life.
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:01 am
Vanessa I am so sorry for what you’re going through. I had both your shops hearted, though I hadn’t purchased anything yet. I have been checking out BigCartel per Thaidream’s suggestions and there’s also ecrater and blujay that offer free shops. As far as shop setup goes eCrater is probably better. HPC can rise again :)
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:09 am
It would be easier to support Thaidreams if she hasn’t been making anti-American comments on the forums (even in threads not related to her defending her store) since she showed up on Etsy. It’s offensive to me and my family who made the choice to live here. Things aren’t perfect here, but they aren’t perfect in Thailand either.
Maybe I can trash Thailand because I lived there for some years too? Do I get extra slam points if I have relatives who still live there? Nasty comments about countries can go both ways, yes? But it’s cool and hip to trash the USA and all the people in it because we’re all the same. Just like all the people in Asia are the same, including those running sweat shops.
Point made?
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 am
Aliciamae, we were on ecrater last year with VERY low sales so we closed it down, and our friend Fabletoo also has a shop on there, she says LOW sales too. (I think she might be closing hers?)
From research bigcartel looks like they are doing well with sales, and Dawanda definitely is for us - 4 sales in 3 days which is awesome because we only got most of our stuff up there on Sunday.
There’s definitely life after Etsy and there’ll have to be when it closes down LOL. We wouldn’t go back on there if they came on bended knee, and will make sure now of our friends shop there either.
Etsy has a habit of saying “we don’t discuss private issues with sellers”. I think that’s their excuse because there usually AREN’T any private issues, but when they say that it leaves other people thinking “oooh, there must be something else wrong” and that’s usually not true. Most of us that have been affected by Etsy’s callous attitude have emails from them to back up our stories and are happy to publish them.
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:17 am
Poompat, huh? I made a couple of comments about Americans usually being the ones who were trashing our shop and yes, other than two people, every problem we have had has been with an American seller. Not ‘trashing’ America, telling the truth.
And what people like you seem to forget is I’m also a US citizen, lived there most of my life, have the passport to prove it. I’ve as much right to say negative things about the US as anyone. I’ve NEVER said I hate America, or hate Americans. I’ve said a couple of times that we’ve had problems with American sellers on Etsy and yes, sad, but it’s true :(
You are also another one who asks me questions, I respond politely and then you attack me. There’s more than enough of those people on Etsy - maybe you would be more comfortable over there?
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:47 am
Let’s keep to the issues at hand, folks. No personal attacks please.
This is not about whether someone is a reseller or who said what to who on the forums, it is about Etsy policy and how it is enforced (or not).
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:05 am
I wish they would give her a second chance too, but it seems like once they make a mistake, they can’t back down and reverse it, they just dig their heels in and stop listening. Yes, Vanessa did have a bad patch and did leave some customers in a lurch, but prior to these real-life crises, she had excellent feedback and many happy customers. She’d always been a responsible seller before. It seems obvious to me that she’s not a hardened criminal or a “bad seed” out to scam anyone. Isn’t someone’s entire history worth anything?
And I’ve also moved and it took over a month to get my dsl activated.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:14 am
I know that the UEN has requested all further posts to be about losing an account on etsy, but I’d like to address one more comment to Thaidreams’ situation.
Thaidreams,
The UEN has graciously allowed you to tell your whole side of this situation, and to make replies back to others who have opinions about certain things. In other words, they are providing a voice for you, a mouth, but you keep insisting on sticking your foot in your mouth.
It’s getting pretty hard to feel any empathy for you, when you blast anyone who disagrees with you. Kind of like you have done previously on the forums. The acusation of you getting into a lot of conflict with others is starting to make sense now.
I think you would really help yourself if you stopped putting down Americans. That would be a good place to start.
Also there are always two sides to every story. We have only heard your side. So expect some people to question what happened.
Thank you.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:26 am
In the case of forum disputes, I think there’s actually more than two sides. If two people are fighting in public, they will each have their subjective opinions on it, of course. But the community at large can also form opinions as witnesses. And regardless of any opinions, the actual posts still exist in their objective reality. (except for one thread calling out Thaidreams that was totally deleted the day before she got kicked off)
I am basing my judgments on what I have seen with my own eyes, not on either side’s portrayal of their own side. And neither side is 100% innocent. But the sides are not being treated equally, and that is my beef with Etsy.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:27 am
Pearl, I’m done here. You are twisting my words. I have NOT kept putting down Americans. Poompat said that’s what i did in the forums. I did NOT. I said most of the sellers who were attacking us were American. They WERE. This to me, having lived there, was a good indication why so many people think we are resellers because they are Americans who have never left the country, so know nothing about my culture or Thailand. Again, not ATTACKING - the truth. 85% of Americans don’t even hold passports, so no, I’m not surprised if they don’t know anything about Thailand and think we are resellers.
why is it that every freakin’ time anybody says anything negative about America, we’re all of a sudden attacking America? What, it’s such a wonderful country it’s 100% perfect, so nothing is wrong with it? I lived there long enough and there are many things wrong with it. Many things right with it too, but it’s not perfect and neither are Americans.
Like I said, done here.
You keep your opinion about me, I’ll keep my own opinion. But I will tell you this, I lived in America for most of my life and the one thing that drove me nuts about it was so many people couldn’t take criticism of their own country.
Sure you can criticize Thailand, it’s not perfect. and neither are Thais. But we’re not so stupid that we get all offended and freaked out if somebody said “the people who attacked me were Thai”. If they WERE Thai, then they would be telling the truth. Why is that so difficult to understand?
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:32 am
And if you’d like a list of the people we had to report to Etsy over 10 months time for attacking our shop in the forums, you can email me privately and I’ll give it to you.
It consists of 8 Americans, 1 French woman who lives in America., and 1 Australian Like I said, most were Americans. So no, I’m not attacking Americans simply stating the truth about the people who harassed us. These people are also the same people who have harassed other sellers. I have emails and copies of convos from at least 6 other sellers who have experienced the same treatment from them (one left a message about it on our blog today). Yet all of those sellers are still selling on Etsy, and most of the 6 who were harassed have been either kicked off or left. Now that’s sad :(
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:33 am
Thai, I have also noticed the lack of traffic on ecrater, but if one is looking to build an easy website with a shopping cart and payment integration and plan on promoting anyway I figure it’s a good option. I agree though that my main point is not so much that venue being great but that there are options :)
It’s extremely unfortunate that Etsy can not stick to its policies or its own goals and directive. The site mission is clearly undercut by closing down shops that have fallen on hard times or are the subject of attacks. There is no longer a “human” side to Etsy as long as they ignore the human faces of their sellers. Once again they forget who pays their bills.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:03 am
AliciaMae, what you are saying is also why I think bigcartel might be a good option. it looks easy to start up a shop (it’s getting RAVE reviews all over the internet, I did some research yesterday) and it’s fully integrated with PayPal which is cool. You’re also correct about ecrater, we did like ecrater for set up, it was easy, but then only a few sales in approx 8 months of being there and on their forums many other sellers complain of the same thing. Dont know why either, because our things ended up almost at top of google search soon after we listed them on ecrater. Weird huh?
Also Dawanda is great right now, especially for closedshop, because there are NO listing fees, so if she starts up over there she’s not spending any money up front and it sounds like that could be one of her problems right now?
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:14 am
I just looked into big cartel and it seems as though you can only have 5 listings for the free account and 100 listings is $20.00.
I don’t mind paying that, but I have over 500 items and it wouldn’t be that useful to me..
I am going to look into ecrater. I signed up for dwanda, it seems a bit confusing to me but I just need to sit down and figure it out!
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:15 am
I’m in complete agreement Thai. I setup a small bigcartel shop yesterday :)
I’m always looking for alternatives to Etsy - I can’t justify the effort there anymore since they can rip my investment out from under me at any time.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:18 am
Closedshop, 500 items on etsy was $100, so the $20 is cheap :) I think it’s 10 free items for the free shop, but yes you’re correct that wouldn’t work for you.
dawanda is completely free listings with a 5% commission if you sell, which is waaaay cheaper than what we were paying on Etsy. You DO have to list in Euros but you can go to http://www.xe.com to convert into US dollars and in our 7 sales, 6 of them to Americans I think (?) nobody has had any problems with the Euro issue.
Good luck with it and contact me if you have any questions or problems about set up. Also visit their forums, the people on there are really nice!
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:24 am
Thank you Thaidreams, thats really nice of you..
I will have to look into dawanda some more. My kind of products are a real good seller anywhere, I am willing to try out new things.
Would I have to convert from US to EUR and then would it be in my paypal as EUR? I have never dealt with international payments before.
Anything is better than Etsy I suppose :D
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:26 am
Has anyone tried lov.li?
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 am
closedshop, you convert from US to EUR and then list your prices in EUR. Then when it sells, it automatically gets converted to US in Paypal. Just MAKE SURE you add a little extra to what you would normally charge on Etsy - (we add about 40 cents) because PayPal seems to charge a higher fee for EURO conversions.
Also you can put in your listings the approximate US dollar price (we haven’t yet but that’s what we’re going to be adding this week). That way American buyers will have an idea what the cost will be without having to convert.
Great thing about Dawanda though is listing items is soooo easy, and they have templates so you can list something similar and don’t have to type in all the information again like you had to on Etsy’s stupid system.
Seriously I think Dawanda is going to be huge and those who get in on the beginning could really do great!
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:33 am
closedshop, I’ve heard love.li doesn’t have many sales?
But if it was me and you have time, I would open a shop on Dawanda, ecrater, bigcartel and love.li and anywhere else you can think of - even Ebay! If you have a huge internet presence you can’t fail to be successful IMO.
Just sit down and spend your next week setting up shops and posting in their forums and all the time keep thinking “F*ck you etsy, f*ck you etsy, f*ck you etsy” …… that’s what we’ve been doing LOL. My mom always says “Success is the best payback”.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:42 am
“When selling things on DaWanda you need to enter your bank details at the latest after your first sales. Until then these fields are optional.”
I don’t have a bank account, surprisingly, I just use paypal. Has this been a problem for anyone?
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:51 am
I’d hope that buyers and sellers from the US can get used to doing things in Euros to some degree. For many of us not in the US, buying (and selling) in a currency which is not our local currency seems like a pretty normal thing to do - and it’s really not that scary.
Also the Euro is a far more stable currency than the USD has been for a while now, which makes life easier as you can more easily keep track of what the exchange rate is and for sellers it means you don’t have to keep upping prices!
But, yes, Paypal will always rip you off when it comes to exchanging currency - and there is no way around it, unfortunately. So you do need to factor that in to your pricing.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:58 am
http://en.dawanda.com/shop/heyprettycupcake
Yay, lol
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:08 am
Poompat Says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:09 am
It would be easier to support Thaidreams if she hasn’t been making anti-American comments on the forums (even in threads not related to her defending her store) since she showed up on Etsy. It’s offensive to me and my family who made the choice to live here. Things aren’t perfect here, but they aren’t perfect in Thailand either.
- Thank you for bringing up this point. This is partly what rubbed me the wrong way when I saw the race card being pulled yet again. I found it ridiculously hypocritical, considering the fact that Thaidreams has taken more than a few cheap shots at Americans in the forum in the past. Things that had me shaking my head in disbelief, to be honest. Yet Thaidreams comes back now with: well, these things happened and they just happened to be American”. Uh, well more than a few resellers on Etsy just happened to be Thai! Come on.
I have been to Thailand and one of my best friends has spent the past 10 years living there. He was a highly successful male model (all over Asia) who went on to open three highly successful jewelry stores- one in Thailand, one on China, and one in Japan. He can now retire at the ripe old age of 25, is he so chooses. He loves it there and doesn’t plan on returning to the states. I know first hand the stunningly beautiful handmade work that comes from these countries. I also know that a whole lot of mass produced goods (yes, some of questionable quality) flows out of there very freely. I was not trying to inflame, but state my personal views on the topic and what I know and see firsthand.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:28 am
It seems like etsy has spun out of control to the point of no return, and right now I want to know how what measures they have adopted to grapple with these issues at hand. I’ve seen thaidreams being harassed in the forums and while the comments about the U.S that she made weren’t exactly fly every country has it’s problems and while the flaws of America are being pointed out by her, so are that of other Asian countries by others. The Asian countries have been picked on mercilessly about how it is a region where there are factories and mass produced goods all around — and well, what are genuine artists from thailand, singapore, hongkong and japan suppose to feel about such callous comments? Some people I’ve spoken to do not subscribe to the ‘race cards’ and accume thaidreams of using it all the time but seriously, do these people see half the things written on the forums sometimes? I find it terribly absurd that forum disputes are not terminated before anger rears its ugly head and feelings get hurt. It’s like admin secretly revels in the melodrama and commotion it causes, before finally getting bored and decides to close the thread.
I suppose all this talk makes people defensive and trigger happy with their words. And while this is an issue that etsians need to work on, ETSY as a corporation has outstanding problems like this one. Admin needs to clarify candidly what exactly went through their minds when they decided to close the stores of thaidreams and prettycupcake. They need to quantify why shops have been closed so randomly, overly fluffy reasons involve $3.50 transactions and forum harassment with the victims being one of the sellers. This miasma of fear and uncertainty only serves to deter future buyers and sellers, and Etsy can spend billions on advertising which will still come to naught if they don’t try to keep their existing users.
I think etsy is a worlds apart from ebay and I love etsy for that but I really think they need to start getting their act together.
January 23rd, 2008 at 9:51 am
closedshop, YAY!!!!! You have a Dawanda shop, I’m sooo happy for you :)
And no, we haven’t entered bank account info yet. And we’ve had 8 sales there (1 more sale today for a total of 5 sales in 3 days :)…..I think somebody on the forums asked that question and Dawanda’s response was something like ‘don’t worry about it, we’ll figure it out’ :) But I think PayPal may have been mentioned as an option too? We can’t do bank account info because it’s too expensive to transfer from Thailand to Europe, but we can do a credit card attached to a bank account so we’re hoping that’s how we’ll pay. So far Dawanda seems really laidback about it, so we are being too LOL.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:28 am
Vanessa- along with Dawanda, you should also use ecrater, shopify, or zen cart- as a shopping cart for your US customers. Linking it from your blog, website, etc.
eCrater is free, you can use paypal or google checkout. Same with shopify. I think some people in the US will be reluctant to shop in Euros. Just my opinion.
And just to reinterate, another point.
Etsy has stated that they discuss things privately with sellers. .
They have also stated in the forums, that they might ban/mute people, and the people banned/muted will not be aware for what infraction the banning/muting is for.
Discussing things privately with sellers would be fine. Slamming the door on them, without an explanation, or appeal process, isn’t so fine.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:01 am
Closedshop’s story just underscores the need for etsy to have one button vacation option for stores. It is not so hard when you have a ton of planning time to put all your items into edit and put up new banners and avatars to make announcements prominent. But for example last week I went to the ER and ended up staying the week in the hospital and getting major surgery. There was really no way for me to talk my husband through the process of putting my shop on vacation, especially considering he was also taking care of me and the kids.
Etsy wants us to communicate with customers, but they do not really give us the means to do so.
Also, it shows that all a competitor has to do to get rid of you is buy an item, then claim they never recieved the item.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:21 am
what they also need is an 800 customer service number.
Relatives might not know how to edit your shop announcement, make your items inactive, etc.
But some could call 800- Etsy and explain what is going on, let customer service make any necessary adjustments.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:27 am
Maggie, why would they give us a Vacation Mode button…it doesn’t involve Flash!
(and yes, it would be such a handy function to have)
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:42 am
I’m going to say something that will probably make people mad BUT, it doesn’t appear to me that cupcake really belongs on Etsy. As far as I can tell, they are a consignment shop.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=178875580
When i look at stores like this, i wonder how they ever ended up on etsy to begin with. While i understand that that situation should not have happened as it did. Clearly, Etsy should not have closed their shop in the fashion that they did. I’m not sure why one would not take a couple minutes to put items in edit mode if a family member was ill. It seems to me that while Etsy made many mistakes, I also see that cupcake made some mistakes as well.
as far as ThaiDreams, i have to be honest, consistently fighting with people is a bad business choice, and this is part of why. I have no doubt that Thai feels like she has been attacked. I’ve read enough of her forum posts to see where she looks aggressive and not very pleasant. This should have resulted in a forum muting, not closing of her store.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
rita: from looking at the google cached page of heyprettycupcake, I recognize several of the artists featured in her products. I’m guessing she had a collaboration with them, like photoglassworks, where she would put their art into her products (buttons, bottle openers, etc.). I can’t speak for the rest of her stock as google cache only shows the first page :-/
there is also a http://www.heyprettycupcake.com which functions as a consignment store. So I’m thinking that the etsy store was legit, while the personal site was consignment.
Completely irrelevant to the snafu at hand, but worth mentioning.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I just thought it was interesting side note. Clearly unrelated to what happened here, but for me at least, makes me question things. It’s very hard to separate out all the issues.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
To the people questioning my time on Etsy: Hey Pretty Cupcake started off as a consignment shop. Strictly consigning on heyprettycupcake.com. Later down the road, I thought that starting up a collaboration would be fun for not only myself, but artists as well. I started selling the collaborations on heyprettycupcake.com but wasn’t getting enough exposure so after a long thought and talking to my collaborators, we opened up an Etsy.
That is when we had 2 sections of Hey Pretty Cupcake. The .com was a consignment shop and the Etsy was a collaboration station.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
There are plenty of other collaboration shops, some of which are featured sellers or spotlighted on the Storque, so I think it must be allowed. If it wasn’t allowed, then she should have been told that was the reason for banning her. I think after seeing the cached feedback score on thepromoshop, that was the real reason for the banning. I am still confused why they didn’t tell her that right off the bat, it might have avoided some of this confusion. I think that Etsy telling her they were banning her over the one bad transaction on heyprettycupcake is partly what led to this sense of injustice. Now that we see the feedback on the other shop it makes a bit more sense, although IMO it’s still pretty heartless.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:58 pm
There are many collaborations stores on Etsy, it is allowed because they are using other artist’s artwork (with permission) then creating their own items from it.
I just discovered yesterday that Dawanda has an On Vacation option. It’s awesome! And their Search WORKS :)
Also, in Dawanda forums, there have been a lot of people posting that they’re from Etsy and have just opened a shop on Dawanda, some of them mentioning they’ve done it because of the stuff going on at Etsy last weekend.
I know of at least 25 people who have opened shops on Dawanda this weekend, I think it’s fabulous!
Oh and we just made the ‘Top Sellers’ on the English Dawanda list for this week :) Totally psyched!
January 24th, 2008 at 12:52 am
i hadn’t looked at the feedback for the other shop. It is pretty bad, and i guess that is my point. While Etsy clearly made some mistakes, attributing the account removal to a single incident (at least that is the situation as it has been presented), when there was a clear problem. I also think it’s important to acknowledge (i’m hardly a etsy cheerleader here) when they seem to have behaved appropriately. While family emergencies, of course, take precedence, numerous orders that were ignored are just not okay.
I understand (and have dealt with sudden emergencies) but not taking the time to email your customers when you run a business is obviously a problem.
I wish cupcake well and hope that she does well elsewhere.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:58 am
“i hadn’t looked at the feedback for the other shop. It is pretty bad, and i guess that is my point.”
I’m going to have to disagree here.
92% is NOT bad. It’s still in the upper percentage. Now if it was below 75%, I’d raise an eyebrow.
I’ve seen ALOT worse elsewhere.
So I seriously doubt that simply because that shop had a less than 100% positive feedback, that that was the reason it was closed.
And if it was, well, there’s something not quite right about that. Because I honestly think it’s unreasonable to expect every single store to KEEP at 100% positive feedback. That’s unrealistic to me. You simply cannot please every single person you sell to, and they will leave you less than stellar feedback. That’s absolutely no reason to lose your shop simply because you’re not at 100% anymore.
There obviously are other reasons as to why Etsy closed that shop. We’ve heard the shop owner’s side of things, we’ll never hear Etsy’s. But to think it’s simply because the feedback was no longer 100%.. that’s delusional to me.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:37 am
did you read the feedback? it’s one non-delivery after another.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:38 am
by the way, as someone who sells elsewhere, i’ve certainly seen worse. HOWEVER, most of the other sites i’ve looked at kick people after about 3 strikes.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:01 am
For sellers, 92% is pretty low. People on Etsy are so afraid to give negatives that I rarely see high volume sellers with feedback below 99%. When you have hundreds of sales, one or two negatives will not drop your percentage below 100% because it is rounded off. So 100% really doesn’t mean 100%, it doesn’t mean you have never had a negative. There are lots of sellers with a 100% rating who do still have a few negatives.
(low volume sellers are a different story because a single bad feedback can knock you down to 80 or whatever) I have seen buyer-only feedback go as low as 60% without Etsy taking any disciplinary measures, but there is a different standard for buyers than for sellers. (and that’s another issue, why are CHRONIC non-paying buyers allowed to keep “buying”?)
But with as many sales as thepromoshop had, they needed over 20 negatives to reach that 92% rating. All of the negatives were recent, and some were really vitriolic.. If each of those people also made a complaint to Etsy, then yeah, I think it definitely could be grounds for Etsy taking action.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:18 am
The majority of the negatives were for LACK OF COMMUNICATION, which is a given. I was packing, moving, making sure I didn’t forget anything. My computer was the first thing to be packed up.
I stated that I will be back in JANUARY and people were leaving negatives in the middle of December, a week after I had said I was moving. Of course I couldn’t communicate, hence the reason I put up an announcement.
I don’t think that should even be a case now. They shut me down, I am taking care of my customers and they still won’t reinstate me and I don’t even care about The Promo Shop, I don’t want that one reinstated, that is the one I was having problems with!
As I have said 100 times before, I have been ripped off for a lot of money on Etsy. I have convo’ed the seller many times, contacted Etsy AND paypal, never got a refund or a sorry, but they are still a seller.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:07 am
Closedshop I totally understand, the point I was trying to make is that they didn’t shut you down for the one bad transaction on heyprettycupcake, which is what their first email said, and which caused some of the confusion. It looks like they are taking both shops down just because you owned them both, not for anything you did or didn’t do with heyprettycupcake.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:40 am
Oh ok JB :)
I emailed them the other day about how I am doing the right thing and why I couldn’t be reinstated. I got an email back from “Emily” today, saying something that didn’t even ANSWER my question. I don’t think “she” even read the email.
It said that it is being shut down because I am the owner of both the shops. Which I never stated I wasn’t or even asked about that in the email.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:45 am
With all the talk of Etsy not knowing or adhering to their own rules nor spelling them out, I had to die of laughter when I saw this thread.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5431990&page=1
Admin Starts Thread recommending a violation of the Do’s & Don’ts
Sellers Revolt
Oops, Admin Closes Thread
I so LOL’d
January 24th, 2008 at 6:17 am
that pretty much describes every email from “Emily” that I’ve received.
I don’t think she reads the questions either, and the answers seem to be determined by some random program like a virtual “magic 8 ball”.
outlook not so good
Better not tell you now
Reply hazy, try again
Perhaps you should have told Emily
“It’s so common, that it really never occurred to me that this was a problem. ”
I hear that’s the get out of jail free card this week.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:27 am
As I said in the other comments, they have a Random Punishment Generator. It’s just not as pretty as the Bannerator so they keep it down in the basement.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:59 am
closedshop:
I saw the negative feedback left on your store through google cache and many of them seemed to point out that throughout the time you were away, you were still making purchases on etsy. That seemed to antagonize a lot of them.. Was your foster sister buying things through your etsy account?
January 24th, 2008 at 10:20 am
additionally, while i can only read the first page of feedback through cache it appears that much of the feedback was being left for item purchased in October and earlier in some cases. I gotta tell you, even with delays in shipment, stuff from before you moved should have been shipped and done by Dec.
I’m not trying to be mean, but i don’t feel like you’ve been entirely candid here. I’m perfectly willing to call etsy on their mistakes, but this doesn’t appear to be one.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:33 am
bizatch, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that thread.
Foot-in-mouth is so Classic Etsy. But, boy, is it painful to watch.
Just another example of Etsy’s overly laid-back management style - they don’t even require their staff to know the rules! Also an example of their favorite double standard: Etsy admins can make mistakes and be human; Etsy members must toe the line or else. And it’s hard to toe the line when the line keeps getting moved around.
And, on the subject of questionable shop closures, whatever happened to the goal of helping people ‘make a living making things’? I guess that’s just a cute catch phrase, not to be taken literally. Andy is right on the mark with this comment:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
No. Consistency. Whatsoever.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I agree that the way that Etsy did this was not good. I do wonder if perhaps Etsy attempted to email this seller but got no response. I’m simply not sure I believe that she got one email about one incident and then suddenly her store was closed. I also don’t think that it is Etsy’s intention to help people take other people’s money (which is what occured here, intentionally or otherwise) and (fair perception or not) it appears that the seller is making it right in response to being removed.
Having recently been through this exact situation with another seller, I can tell you that from a buyer’s perspective this all gets very dicey. I doubt very many people *intend* to get in this situation.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:25 am
DantesSpirit Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 12:58 am
“I’m going to have to disagree here.
92% is NOT bad. It’s still in the upper percentage.
Now if it was below 75%, I’d raise an eyebrow. ”
On eBay I have always read that you should not buy from someone who has below 98′5%. If you read the forums over there that seems to be the common recommendation that is given. I usually keep that in mind when buying online.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I’m new to this debate but after all that’s happened I thought I might chime in. I opened an Etsy shop in April of last year and until Nov. I had an excellent experience, was selling insanely well, and had 100% positive feedback. I had some personal issues to tend to and had a slew of orders that needed to leave soon and since everything I sold was made to order, I emailed all customers expecting packages and everything seemed to be okay. I abandoned my computer for a week to work on taking care of my business and last I knew things were settled between myself and my buyers. I came back to the computer and my shop had been closed. Turns out a buyer who had bought from me weeks before this had left some awfully negative feedback and another had jumped on that bandwagon. The first buyer (we’ll call her/him Buyer One) was telling admin. that they had never received their package and had already filed a claim with Paypal. I checked my tracking info for the package and it had in fact been delivered…a month earlier, on time and without problems. This cleared up the issue with Paypal but Buyer One was still pushing Etsy and they refused to reinstate my store until I had either re-shipped or refunded. Since the items I should were pricey (in the $30-40 range) I opted to reship, again with tracking info. That info again confirmed that Buyer One had received their goods…but again they said they didn’t and Etsy kept my shop closed because I refused to refund money for the transaction. Keep in mind the tracking info I had was more than enough to close a Paypal claim. The second buyer I mentioned had simply not realized that there would be a two week lag before shipment and once that fact was laid out she retracted her claim…
I’m not really sure what the deal is with heyprettycupcake’s store but I thought I’d sorta detail my issue so that others could be aware. While I was on Etsy I visited UEN often, but after the removal of my store I stopped popping in here and now I wish I hadn’t. My issues with my customers were taken care of promptly and everyone that had bought from me was made aware of the situation but Etsy took the side of a buyer who was clearly scamming and as a result I lost my livelihood right before the Christmas season. I wish now that I had persued getting my shop reinstated but at the time I didn’t know how to go against the powers that be and though I was devastated and upset I felt there was really nothing I could do.
It’s just hard for me to buy those taglines and explanations from Etsy when I know my situation and how unfair admin was to me in dealing with the issues surrounding my situation…
January 24th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Thanks for adding your story, SamJoe!
that illustrates how indeed, with the current Etsy system, an unscrupulous seller or psycho buyer could destroy anyone’s business by just claiming they never received the package.
This is also the sort of thing that indicates clearly, policy and experience wise, Etsy is nowhere near being able to properly take the role of a payment processor like Paypal.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
“I saw the negative feedback left on your store through google cache and many of them seemed to point out that throughout the time you were away, you were still making purchases on etsy. That seemed to antagonize a lot of them.. Was your foster sister buying things through your etsy account?”
The last thing I bought on that Etsy account was some cufflinks (for an order) which was way before the day that I even closed down the shop. I don’t know why people are saying that I was making purchases because I WASN’T.
“additionally, while i can only read the first page of feedback through cache it appears that much of the feedback was being left for item purchased in October and earlier in some cases. I gotta tell you, even with delays in shipment, stuff from before you moved should have been shipped and done by Dec.”
I made custom promotional items. A lot of the time, when my customers order from me, they don’t have ready artwork. Some buy things in a sale and will get them to me when they get a chance. I have a girl who ordered from me when I FIRST opened up the shop (june-july) who hadn’t even gotten their artwork to me. A few days before I left, I printed up EVERYTHING in my inbox and worked on orders, my huband, my foster sister and I stayed up until 4AM getting orders done. I have a huuuuuuge receipt of items that I sent out before I left, dated 12-13-07, 24 packages shipped out.
January 24th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Vanessa- I looked at the cached feedback for thepromoshop, not only for the first page but also the 2nd page, the 3rd page you had a few neutrals from November for orders placed in September. It looks like between the 2nd and 3rd page is where everything went to pot.
I understand that you were moving and all, and didn’t have your own computer set up, but when you look back on it all now, Do you wish you had maybe gone to the library or somewhere they have a public computer and logged on to let clients know what was up?
The feedback is really bad on those 2 pages, and a lot of it stems, I think, from buyers feeling like they were left high and dry. Some attempt to explain things would have been better than none at all. Sure some buyers would still be dissappointed that they didn’t get their items, but not so much as to write feedback like that.
January 24th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Samjoe said:
Samjoe, that is disturbing. Etsy has recently said that it will not force refunds or replacing the item if you can prove you shipped it. They also recently said that they will honor the store’s policies, that your individual policies trump theirs. That may indeed be their “general” policy but they deviate from that policy as often as they wish. You not only proved shipment, but also had proof of delivery. In cases like that I really think it’s best for Etsy to step out and let paypal mediate the dispute, since paypal handles the money and paypal has a defined, impartial process in place for resolving disputes. In fact the majority of paypal disputes are settled in favor of the buyer, so for you, the seller, to prevail, you really must have all your ducks in a row.
Buyers like that scare me, because they could pull the same scam on repeated sellers and we have no protection. You lost two items and your whole business, and they are no doubt still active on Etsy. :(
January 24th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
JB, I was under the same impressions as you. I assumed that Paypal closing the complaint would have helped cool admin down but no such luck. I was basically told that I could refund her money OR my shop would be closed…and not hours after the email from Emily detailing this, sure enough, my store was gone.
I haven’t checked if that buyer is still active on Etsy but really, even if they are, there would have been not much I could do to warn other sellers, especially when it’s been proven over and over again that it’s nearly impossible for those that strictly buy from Etsy to get banned permanently. The whole situation was immensely frustrating to me, especially since I had decided to take a year off college to pursue this as a career when I started doing so well.
I’ll give Etsy this: We all know there’s no venue for which those of us that sell our work can get so much amazing exposure and most of the time support, but to me, in dealing with admin over this, they seemed incredibly juvenile and callous about how this would effect a seller that was making a living through their services that I was paying for. It still sucks but there’s nothing to be done I suppose and honestly, after what’s happened, I just didn’t pursue getting my shop reinstated by refunding my buyer (though I was already out over $60 for the goods I had sent) because I didn’t want to be there anymore…
January 24th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Wow, that’s awful, SamJoe. You did everything right as far as I can tell so I really don’t get it at all.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
It does appear that there were issues with thepromoshop that Etsy needed to deal with. What I take issue with is that Etsy should have been absolutely 100% certain of the facts and communicated them, in a professional manner, to Vanessa. They bungled the delivery, targeted the wrong shop, confused the seller - and did all of this over a long weekend. They should have behaved in a businesslike and logical fashion, been accurate about the issue at hand, and given adequate voice to Vanessa’s side of the story. The ultimate outcome may not have been any different, but a whole mess of fear and angst could have been avoided.
As for thaidreams, if a ‘history of conflicts’ was the reason given, then forum banning should have been the result - not store closure.
Now we are learning of yet another shop, SamJoe, closed as a result of a single complaint – something which Etsy has said it will not (generally) do. And yet that is precisely what they have done. Makes one wonder how many other horror stories are out there . . .
Furthermore it seems absolutely ridiculous for a company that touts its humanity to have no official means of appeal in cases of muting, banning and deletion.
The rule enforcement on Etsy - and in many instances, admin understanding of the rules - is all over the map. Etsy has no consistent policy on anything. Despite TOU, D&Ds, Guidelines or what have you, everything is done on a ‘case-by-case’ basis, which is the same as having no policy or procedure at all. And because of Etsy’s bungling of these issues, and a growing history of closing shops in error, they continue to erode the trust between itself and the members.
Brief sidetrack:
Interesting that Etsy is determined to delete shops over one disgruntled buyer and without having a proper dialogue with the seller, yet they completely ignored - for months – the ‘design flaw’ that allowed them to pocket a seller’s .20 renew/relist fee on certain listings, without delivering the contracted four month listing time. In some cases, not only did the seller get NO time, but time was subtracted, depending on the length of time the item had been inactive. Some sellers lost more than a single fee for the same item in multiple attempts to relist. Soooo, it’s apparently okay for Etsy to take money without delivering the ‘goods’.
Shame. Shame. Shame.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
That is the same ultimatum that several other sellers received, despite them providing proof of reshipping the item. (sellers not listed in the main article here, sellers who wish to remain private)
I find an ultimatum like that totally inappropriate from Etsy if you are following YOUR store policy and the policy was clearly described to the customer.
Now again in Samjoe’s case, there may be more to the case than this one transaction. Samjoe also said that some later orders were delayed and that he/she had emailed all the buyers to explain the delay. It’s possible more than one of them also complained to Etsy. BUT that doesn’t excuse Etsy’s handling of this one transaction where you already reshipped the item and had proof of delivery for BOTH shipments. (plus it must have been proof of delivery to the confirmed paypal address, if you prevailed in the paypal dispute)
Regardless of any other delayed orders or complaining customers, Etsy’s ultimatum to you regarding THIS case was inappropriate.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Okay, here’s another one to underscore Etsy’s inconsistency. I ran across a seller who was told a few months ago that their store was going to be closed. But Etsy never closed them, so they kept selling and seem rather surprised that they were allowed to remain open. Not kidding. Convo me for info if you don’t believe me.
Gah, I had a huge stupid post written but I deleted it. Here it is in a nutshell: The biggest issue here is that Etsy does not do ANYTHING consistently.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Samjoe:
You have no idea how worrying all these incidents of shop closure is. I am peeved and perplexed all at the same time because it seems this can happen to any one of us with no way of protecting ourselves as sellers. According to what happened to you, even delivery confirmation won’t help to protect us. This is really frightening and I am terribly sorry this had to happen to you when clearly you were not in the wrong at all!! If any etsy admin is reading this, please PLEASE please clarify things once and for all. Thus is all very frustrating knowing that it can happen to any one of us.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Thanks for the comments and thoughts guys, I appreciate it…
JB, I completely understand what you’re saying about the other buyers and you might be right. As far as I know I had worked everything out with my buyers BUT my shop was closed before they would have been able to leave unsatisfactory feedback. However, I never received any complaints directly to my email (which I made sure that customers of mine during that week long limbo had) from my buyers so I assumed that all was fine…
On the point of our personal shop policies trumping those of Etsy’s, I find that utter nonsense. My shop policy clearly stated that ONLY when the confirmation numbers for packages provided no help, would I resend a package and since my goods were so expensive (again, not that they were expensive but they were around the $30-40 range) that was the only option. There were of course instances in which I would refund purchases (though I think that may have only happened twice). Anyway, I pointed this out to Emily and again her response was simply that I had a few hours to provide proof that I had refunded my buyer’s purchase or I would forfeit my shop. Now that I read other’s experiences with this kind of thing (though we can’t be sure of the entire story) I am more annoyed yet happy that it’s not something I have to deal with anymore…
January 24th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I would like to suggest that without seeing SamJoe’s feedback, we can’t really see what is going on. We are getting one side of one person’s story, where the person isn’t telling who they are. Now, i’m not saying he should have to, but i am saying that after the incident where thepromoshop said this was all because of a single incident from sept. and now she states that she had orders from June or July that were not filled because the customer did not supply artwork but she didn’t refund, and we can see that clearly there were numerous customers unhappy with the service they did and did not receive. In light of that, i personally have a hard time just taking one person’s word for what happened. That’s me…
January 25th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Well that is completely up to Samjoe if they want to reveal their former shop name or not. They are not included in the top level article, and people can say (pretty much) whatever they like in comments, within reason. UEN makes no guarrantee that comments are accurate, they are the opinion and responsibility of the member who posted them.
The same applies to anyone’s posts on the Etsy forums or the Storque, as well. Admins are responsible for the Storque articles and for their own forum posts, but are not responsible for user comments and do not research the validity or accuracy of user’s forum posts. i.e. if someone said their dog just died or their sister is on crack or they got fired from their job, Etsy doesn’t verify any of that.
Caveat emptor, here and there.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:27 am
If heyprettycupcake had written in the etsy forums “I had 21 negative feedbacks and admin closed my shop over 1 non delivery” I think the hysteria over there about this issue would have been reduced. Her post said that she’d been closed over 1 non delivery. When you look at the feedback, admin had every reason to close the shop, a long string of negatives during the same time period indicates a big shop problem. I understand that personal life takes first priority over a shop, but if heyprettycupcake had refunded everyone’s money as soon as she saw that it was going to take much too long to fill the orders, I’m sure etsy would have been more understanding about the situation. Feedback from one person who got their order said it was of poor quality and looked rushed.
I just feel like heypretttycupcake wasn’t completely straightforward on the etsy forum, and now people are freaking out because they think 1 problem with a 3.50 item can get you kicked off of etsy. In reality, this 1 item was the continuation of a pattern, and admin was right to shut a shop that looked like it was unable to provide service.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:03 am
I am wiling to guess that if Etsy had TOLD Vanessa on Friday that both her stores were closed due to the 21 bad feedbacks on thepromoshop, she never would have created the “closedshop” account and never would have posted on the forums at all, so there would have been NO hysteria.
Because that is what her email from Emily said. Why would Vanessa think Emily was lying? She took her at her word.
I expect this was just a case of admin being in a hurry to get out of the office, it was late afternoon on a Friday before a long weekend, and people are just mentally checked out. Not paying attention to detail.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:13 am
meg9, that’s exactly what i think. Having that kind of feedback and acting like cupcake did seems disingenous to me. Additionally, i guess i would suggest that in this like in all things, we don’t know what exactly happened. We know what has been told. In this case we know that cupcake was some less than forthright, so we can’t be sure precisely what Etsy did or did do.
The situation could have been very different–she emailed etsy and said, but that was two months ago…and they said they’d take care of it. then they went to check her feedback, etc. and saw the other store, went there and said, wow. we need to deal with this immediately.
i think that one of the issues is that people had items up and were continuing to sell.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:22 am
JB Says:
January 25th, 2008 at 8:03 am
If heyprettycupcake had written in the etsy forums “I had 21 negative feedbacks and admin closed my shop over 1 non delivery” I think the hysteria over there about this issue would have been reduced
I am wiling to guess that if Etsy had TOLD Vanessa on Friday that both her stores were closed due to the 21 bad feedbacks on thepromoshop, she never would have created the “closedshop” account and never would have posted on the forums at all, so there would have been NO hysteria.
Her post said that she’d been closed over 1 non delivery.
Because that is what her email from Emily said. Why would Vanessa think Emily was lying? She took her at her word.
Hi JB, My thought is just that unless a shop owner hadn’t visited their shop at all in a while, they would know that they had a big amount of negative feedback, by not disclosing that in the forum, it seems disingenuous. Yes etsy gave 1 reason for the closure, but a shop owner with that much negative feedback would have to realize that admin saw a pattern in their transactions. That wasn’t explained in the forums and people got really nervous about their own shops and “OMG what happens if someone doesn’t get their package, can they close me?”
January 25th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I just wanted to pop in one last time and sorta second what RitaN had said - I realize that no one is aware of the shop I ran and I completely agree with what she said (and JB for that matter): take these things being said with a grain of salt. It *is* just one side of a story, even when it’s my story. I wasn’t putting it out there to start more problems, just to add to the debate. I literally just popped in to UEN after months because I was bored/curious and I saw this thread and thought what had happened to me might be of interest to some. But again, this is MY side of the story and to be honest, as I stated before, my shop was closed and I had no chance to check my own feedback - granted, I was not made aware of any further issues with my buyers via email, but that doesn’t mean Etsy wasn’t seeing something that I wasn’t…
Just sayin’. That said, I do appreciate the feedback here and regardless of how these shops were closed I think it is important to discuss the way that Etsy handled the situations as I think it’s clear to everyone that it was done hastily, improperly, inconsistently, and maybe unprofessionally on their part…
January 25th, 2008 at 11:39 am
The reason Heyprettycupcake was removed because one of the members affiliated with it became in bad standings with her shope. This person ran thepromoshop, paperzombie and heyprettycupcake. Thepromoshop had over 21 negatives and some people never received refunds or items as late as August. As per esty’s rules, if one account goes in bad standings they all get deleted.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I admit, I’ve not had time to read all 200+ responses. But, also consider how many positive feedback are the result of “kiss and make up” transactions. What might have been an awful negative can be turned into a positive just through that (and a refund of the cost, or whatever). The customer may still be disappointed, but since the money was refunded (or whatever), it’s turned into a positive.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:34 am
It’s happened again - http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5444820
lesliesgems says:
my shop “lesliejewelry” was deactivated yesterday so now i cant get to addresses to ship. Aparently there was a customer who didnt recieve a poackage and reported it rather than convoing me, so my shop was shut off with no notice. i emailed twice yesterday and im still waiting. Whats going to happen?
Posted at 8:31 am, January 31 2008 EST
January 31st, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Thanks Halflyng.
It looks like Etsy has reinstated Lesliejewelry. Thank goodness for that at least, but I still don’t know why they are closing accounts without first trying to work with the seller. She says the shut-down notice was the first she had heard about the problem. (the customer never contacted her either)
She also seems to be telling the truth about her spotless history:
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:WnTcb1GKBbQJ:lesliejewelry.etsy.com/+lesliejewelry+etsy&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
This was her account on Jan 16 and she has 100% positive feedback. also, she only had 51 sales which means she must have BOUGHT over 75 items on Etsy.
Her current feedback on the reopened shop is also 100% positive.
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5152781
January 31st, 2008 at 7:23 pm
JB Says:
January 31st, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Thanks Halflyng.
It looks like Etsy has reinstated Lesliejewelry. Thank goodness for that at least, but I still don’t know why they are closing accounts without first trying to work with the seller. She says the shut-down notice was the first she had heard about the problem. (the customer never contacted her either)
She also seems to be telling the truth about her spotless history:
She has ONE neutral. No negatives. So much for etsy telling the buyer to contact the seller BEFORE Etsy closes the shop.
I’m honestly half expecting to log in one day and find my shop closed with no warning, for no reason.
This is stupid ridiculous.
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:41 am
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